István Csók

After seeing the warnings sent home every quarter, his father finally ran out of patience and reproachfully asked the question in his reprimanding letter: "What will become of you?"

Thus, in 1882, he entered the Model Drawing School in Budapest, where he studied under the direction of Bertalan Székely, János Greguss and Károly Lotz until 1885.

This is precisely what Csók wanted to escape from when he left the Model Drawing School, but this time he chose Munich instead of Paris, and attended the Academy of Fine Arts here in 1886-87.

Here, no matter how much it was against his will, he was forced to adapt to the methods of academic painting, the precise regulations of which were strictly kept in mind by the school's rules.

That's why he didn't even seek the patronage of Munkácsy, who was enjoying the fullness of his glory in Paris at the time and helped several young compatriots in the difficult days of their start.

Bouguereau and Robert Fleury were his masters, but the artistic spirit that surrounded them all and its concrete manifestation in the works of Bastien-Lepage and Dagnan Bouveret had a greater influence on him, even on his Hungarian contemporaries there.

It was then that his work entitled "Potato Peelers" was created, which shows an interesting combination of Munich and Paris influences.

In the early period of his art, he created powerful, cartoonish figural compositions with folk subjects, and then painted many women dressed in colorful folk costumes, such as his famous work "The Lord's Supper" in Munich in 1890, i.e. "Do this in memory of me", which he presented in the Art Gallery in Budapest, and with which in the Paris Salon in 1891 he won a first-class gold medal, a first-class gold medal at the Antwerp exhibition in 1894, and a first-class gold medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900.

The two years in Paris did not pass without a trace: his painting gradually freed itself from the atmosphere of Munich, his colors became more heightened and informal.

After such antecedents, he painted the biggest composition of his life, "Erzsébet Báthory", which was not received with sufficient understanding at home, and the promised state purchase was also missed.

Driven by the goal of failure, he chopped up and destroyed his large compositions from this period, which were mainly made in Nagybánya (God be with you, my love!, Christ and Venus - in other words: And deliver us from evil).

Influenced by French Impressionism (Matisse, Maurice Denis, Van Dongen, Vlaminck, Derain), he painted the works entitled "Műteremsarok" and "Thámár".

It was such a great success that the Minister of Public Education bought István Csók's self-portrait for the Uffizi gallery.

Returning home from Paris in 1909, he achieved great success with his portrait of Tibor Wlassics in the Műcsarnok, then in 1917 in Pittsburgh, USA.

He regularly spent his summers in Transdanubia, Tolna and Baranya counties, and with his colorful pictures he made the picturesque costumes of the Sárköz and Öcsény peasants widely known (Öcsényi baptistry-1902, Honeyeaters, Teknővájó cigányok -1903).

The sumptuous clothing of the many women, the freshness and bright lights of the countryside were an inexhaustible storehouse of new and new pictorial themes.

Returning home, he won a state gold medal in 1911 (Wlassics portrait, Hungarian National Gallery).

With his keen eye, the excellent colorist observed and recorded on canvas the water changing such a rich color scale in its turbulence.