Béla Adalbert Czóbel, Still Life Yellow Flowers 

Béla Czóbel created this pastel still life of yellow flowers sometime during his long career, which stretched from the early 20th century to the mid 1970s. Czóbel was Hungarian, but lived in Paris during its heyday as the center of the European avant-garde. While this image seems like an unassuming still life, we can also read it as a record of the artist’s negotiation of new and old. Czóbel had been associated with the Fauves, a group known for their use of strong color. Although he later rejected this label, the Fauvist influence remains. However, instead of a radical break with tradition, Czóbel takes on one of painting’s oldest genres. The image provides a portal into the creative life of an artist working in a time of great social change, whose path was also affected by the shifting politics of Eastern Europe. By researching the history of art institutions of the time, and the social networks that sustained them, we can get a clearer picture of how this still life came to be.