BÉLA ADALBERT CZOBEL (1883-1976) was one of the most highly regarded figures in 20th-century Hungarian art. A student of Béla Iványi Grünwald at the Free School of Painting in Nagybánya (now Baia Mare, Rom.) from 1902 to 1903, he studied in Munich and at the Académie Julian in Paris. At the Salon d’Automne he exhibited his work with Fauvist artists in 1905, In 1911 he became a member of the "Nyolcak" (“The Eight”), an influential Modernist group in Budapest. From 1914 he lived in the Netherlands and later in Berlin.
 
His unique cityscapes, interiors, and portraits, which had a powerful ambience reminiscent of German Expressionists. In 1925 he moved to Paris, where he remained for 15 years and where he produced most of his mature works, and eventually 1929 held a one-man exhibition in New York City in 1929.
 
After World War II he alternated summers and winters in Paris and Szentendre, a picturesque Hungarian town. Czobel was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1948.