Bela Czobel (Hungarian 1883-1976)

Bela Czobel received his first training at the Nagybanya artists colony and at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Munich, before going to Paris in 1903, where he studied at the Academie Julian. He met Pablo Picasso, Maurice Asselin and Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac and began to adopt a more avant-garde style related to Fauvism; three of his paintings were exhibited alongside Fauvist works at the Salon d Automne in 1905. On his return to Hungary in 1906 he was the first to introduce the new spirit of 20th-century painting to Nagybanya. His historical importance lies in his role as a link between the Ecole de Paris and Hungarian painting and in his attempts to fuse the two traditions.