Béla Czobel - "woman Sitting With Arms Crossed", Around 1930 - Expressionism - Hungarian Avant-garde

Superb expressionist work, in mixed technique, gouache and charcoal, by the Hungarian painter Béla Czobel.
Expressionism, obviously, the way in which Czobel around 1930 depicts this woman sitting on a chair with her arms crossed. From a subject of great simplicity he turns it into a complex work. The black charcoal lines cross and re-cross again with an answer or a question in the tumult of the brushstrokes.

Béla Czobel was born in Budapest on September 4, 1883 and died in 1976 in the same city.
It was his grandfather who guided Czobel towards an artistic career that began in 1902 in the painter's colony of Nagybanya in Transilvania.
The following year he left to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
In 1903 Czobel arrived in Paris and attended classes at the Julian Academy, then directed by Jean-Paul Laurens.
He meets Henri Matisse.
He exhibited alongside Derain, Vlaminck, Braque and Matisse, at the Salon d'Automne in the room called "aux fauves" in 1905.
In 1907, Czobel moved to Falguière.
Every summer he returns to paint in the countryside of his native country and becomes the ambassador of the French avant-garde in Hungary.
In 1909 Czobel helped found a Hungarian avant-garde group called “The Eight” and introduced Fauvism to Budapest.
In 1913 he won the prize at the International Exhibition of Post-Impressionist Painting at the House of Artists in Budapest.
During World War I, Czobel moved to Bergen, Holland.
Between 1919 and 1925, he lived in Berlin where he discovered German expressionism and participated in the New Secession group, before returning to France.
Czobel spent the years of Occupation in Szentendre in Hungary, where he settled after the end of the war and shared his time there from then on with France until his death in 1976.

In addition to his participation in various Salons and numerous group exhibitions, his main personal exhibitions were: 1929 New York, from 1952 to 1964 the Zak gallery in Paris, 1956 Budapest, 1958 Szentendre and Venice Biennale, 1965 Geneva, 1966 Amsterdam, 1969 the René Drouet gallery in Paris.
His works are kept in the museums of: Amsterdam (Stedelijk Mus) - Berlin - Budapest (Gal Nat) - Detroit - Geneva - Paris (Mus Nat d'Art mod) - Szentendre.
His estate was deposited in Szentendre at the Czobel Museum, inaugurated a year before his death.

Gouache and charcoal on paper in perfect condition, signed “Czobel” lower right.
Size: 23,6 x 17,3 Inches without frame and 27,2 x 20,9 Inches with its solid oak frame.