After attending the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts in 1919, Mária Modok joined the Nagybánya artists’ colony in 1923. In 1930 she became a member of the New Society of Artists and in 1933 she studied in Paris, returning there for further study between 1937 and 1939. Her paintings from this period show an acute social conscious. Her first solo exhibition took place at the Tamás Gallery in Budapest in 1935. In 1940 she married the painter Béla Czóbel (1883-1976), and in the 1950s the couple lived between Paris and Szentendre.

The marriage brought decisive changes to her art. After marrying, she devoted herself mainly to painting still lives as well as her surroundings, producing works that bore the imprint of contemporary French painting. A commemorative exhibition of the works of this excellent colourist was held in Esztergom in 1974.