Articles by Initial Letters
Ki a városból – II.
- Issue: 2023/1
- Starting page: 12
- Author: Molnos Péter
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The artwork of painter Czene Béla – Part Two. Excerpts from a book by art historian Molnos Péter published in 2022 by Móra Kiadó. Recently a large number of Czene’s paintings were ’discovered’ in the family attic. Czene Béla, 1911–1999, studied art in Budapest and in Rome. “Czene’s work looked neither to the west, nor to the east, rather, he drew from the past, from his ancestors in the tiny villages of Gömör, the farms on the Hungarian plain, the peasant towns…” This section tells about Czene’s participation in large exhibitions in Budapest during the first half of the 1940s naming specific works with peasant life themes that he showed during the period. By 1944 his works were “…like rugs or frescos….they grow beyond the canvas and seem to demand a wall”. Czene was able to avoid military service for most of this time (WWII), but was finally drafted at the end of the war. He found a good situation as portrait painter for the commanding officers, but soon became a prisoner of war then escaped just before being sent to Siberia to do hard labor.