Siblings (1920-as évek dereka)

Nelly Timkó attended the painting school of Frigyes Balla. She first appeared at the exhibitions of the pupils of the painting school. (1923, 1925, 1926), which were held in the Palace of Culture in Arad. According to a contemporary critic, Timkó was "the only representative of the modern trend in the school. She takes the colours from her palace in a way that young students are not used to'. At the same time, between 1924 and 1927, she also visited Nagybánya (Baia Mare) in the summer to paint, which was not unusual at the time. In the 1920s, Romanian art colleges sent some of their students to Nagybánya for a summer internship, so that they could spend two months getting to know the picturesque countryside, to get a taste of the traditions of the long-established artist's colony and to learn from the proofreading of the Nagybánya masters during their drawing and painting practice. Timkó moved to Budapest, presumably in the 1930s, and in 1933 she exhibited at the exhibition of the Magyarság publishing house, which was held on the first floor of the Klotild Palace. 

Few of Timko's early paintings are known. It is possible that she painted the Siblings during the summers she spent in Nagybánya. This may be suggested by the identity of the young girl and boy (their simple clothing and the girl's uncovered head), since at that time the artists' colony employed official models, all of whom were of gypsy origin. On the other hand, the lush vegetation behind the siblings, which so often appears with its characteristic bright green as a background in the pictures taken in Nagybánya. Timkó's painting can be compared to the paintings of Angéla Szuly, who we know attended the free school in Nagybánya in 1925, so it is not inconceivable that they even knew each other. Both of them (following the results of plein air painting, post-impressionism and Hungarian activism) refract light in a prismatic way, thus making the (rainbow) colours that create light visible to the eye. In Timko's painting, the girl is still wearing her suddenly elongated body strangely, standing slightly awkwardly (between childhood and adulthood), while the boy has angelic features with his turquoise eyes and delicate features.