Laszlo Czobel (1880-1917) b. Budapest
JARDIN ORIENTALE 1907 Signed "Laszlo 07"

To date, little has been written about the author of this piece, Laszlo Czobel. That may be due to his stance as a loner at a timew when most artists were working in groups, publishing manifestos and collectively bargaining for the attention of critics and other creators of the literature of taste.

Laszlo Czobel may have been a close relative, possibly even an older brother of Bela Czobel who, as a member of the Budapest "Group of Eight", championed the advanced styles of painting which were creating one sensation after another in Paris at the turn of the century. Laszlo obviously shared his relative’s passion for the art of the avant garde but chose to leave Budapest for Paris where he would remain sequestered at the very heart of all that was "nouveau" until his early death at the age of 37.

Laszlo’s brief career (it was cut short by his death in the trench warfare of 1919 as a soldier-conscript of the Austro-Hungarian army) is marked by his response to the work of the Impressionists, the Nabis, Paul Cezanne and the group heralded as Les Fauves. Laszlo was profoundly moved by the primitive power in the "naive" art of Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier), the explosive color of Les Fauves and the decorative solutions of Henri Matisse. The "occult balance" in this painting of Laszlo’s owes much to the influence of Japanese prints and Chinese painting.

Le Jardin Orientale bears the imprint of all these several influences.

Again, we should not expect to find this loner’s name on the lists of artists associated with this or that artistic movement or a journalist’s report of a success de scandale. We note , for example, that he was not drawn into the auslander circle of August Macke and Franz Marc, two attractive young painters who arrived in Paris at the same time as Laszlo and whose fame is perpetuated in part by ther association with the group known as Der Blaue Reiter. ( Incidentally, these two artists would share Laszlo’s fate in the trenches of World War I: Macke was killed in 1914; Marc in 1916.)

It is possible that he was personally acquainted with Matisse. It is also possible that he was among those favored with invitations to the legendary gatherings at the home of Gertrude Stein with Picasso and company. There is simply no record of such attendance or acquaintance. In fine, we may never really know very much about the workaday, social milieu of this artist.

But, we have the paintings. And what we do know is that Laszlo Czobel, the painter, responded to and absorbed the strongest artistic influences of his time. Further, if we consider the very early date in the century of such paintings as Le Jardin Orientale, he and his work may well have exerted an as yet unreported but significant influence on some of this century’s better known artists. With the discovery, recovery, and publication of more works by this artist, we may someday realize a clear and fair measure of this fine artist’s contribution to the art of the twentieth century. >

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