František Kupka

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František Kupka
František Kupka, circa 1928

František Kupka, circa 1928
Born (1871-09-23)23 September 1871
Opočno, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic)
Died 24 June 1957(1957-06-24) (aged 85)
Puteaux, France
Nationality Czech
Field Painting
Training Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Académie Julian
École des Beaux-Arts
Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912, oil on canvas, 210 x 200 cm, Narodni Galerie, Prague. Published in Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants" 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris.

František Kupka (September 23, 1871 – June 24, 1957) (also known as Frank Kupka or François Kupka)[1][2] was a Czech painter and graphic artist. He was a pioneer and co-founder of the early phases of the abstract art movement and Orphic cubism (Orphism). Kupka's abstract works arose from a base of realism, but later evolved into pure abstract art.

Biography

Education

František Kupka was born in Opočno, eastern Bohemia (now Czech Republic) in 1871. From 1889 to 1892, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. At this time, he painted historical and patriotic themes. Kupka enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he concentrated on symbolic and allegorical subjects. He was influenced by the painter and social reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913) and his naturistic life-style. Kupka exhibited at the Kunstverein, Vienna, in 1894. His involvement with theosophy and Eastern philosophy dates from this period. By spring 1894, Kupka had settled in Paris; there he attended the Académie Julian briefly and then studied with Jean-Pierre Laurens at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Career

Katedrála (The Cathedral) 1912-13, oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm, Museum Kampa, Prague, Czech Republic

Kupka worked as an illustrator of books and posters and, during his early years in Paris, became known for his satirical drawings for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he settled in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris, and that same year exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne. Kupka was deeply impressed by the first Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909 in Le Figaro. Kupka's 1909 painting Piano Keyboard/Lake marked a break in his representational style. His work became increasingly abstract around 1910–11, reflecting his theories of motion, color, and the relationship between music and painting (orphism). In 1911, he attended meetings of the Puteaux Group (Section d'Or). In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in the Cubist room, although he did not wish to be identified with any movement. Creation in the Plastic Arts, a book Kupka completed in 1913, was published in Prague in 1923.

In 1931, he was a founding member of Abstraction-Création. In 1936, his work was included in the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and in an important show with another Czech painter Alphonse Mucha at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. A retrospective of his work took place at the Galerie Mánes in Prague in 1946. The same year, Kupka participated in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, where he continued to exhibit regularly until his death. During the early 1950s, he gained general recognition and had several solo shows in New York.

Between 1919 and 1938 Kupka was financially supported by his good friend, art collector and industrialist Jindřich Waldes who accumulated a substantial collection of his art. Kupka died in 1957 in Puteaux, France.

Work

Kupka had a strong interest in color theory and freeing colors from descriptive associations (which is thought to have possibly influenced other artists like Robert Delaunay).[3] Margit Rowell described his painting The Yellow Scale (c. 1907) as "Kupka's first attempt to come to terms with color theory in which the result is both personal and successful".[4] Although a self-portrait, the subject of the painting was the color yellow.[5] Around 1910 he began developing his own color wheels, adapting a format previously explored by Sir Isaac Newton[3] and Hermann von Helmholtz. This work in turn led Kupka to execute a series of paintings he called "Discs of Newton" (1911–12).[3]

  • Planes by Colors
  • The Colored One
  • Reminiscence of a Cathedral
  • Blue Space
Planes by Colors, Large Nude, (Plans par couleurs, grand nu), 1909–1910, oil on canvas, 150.2 x 180.7 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Works in Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy:

  • Study for Woman Picking Flowers (Femme cueillant des fleurs), ca 1910
  • Study for Amorpha, Warm Chromatics, Chromatique chaude and for Fugue in Two Colors (Fugue a deux couleurs), ca 1911-1912
  • Vertical Planes (Plans verticaux), 1911–1912
  • Study for Organization of Graphic Motifs I (Localisations de mobiles graphiques I), ca 1911-12
  • Around a point (Autour d'un point), ca 1920-1925

Notes, references and sources

Notes and references
  1. ↑ Artcyclopedia, Frantisek Kupka
  2. ↑ He published in France under this name.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 John Gage (1999). Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. University of California Press. p. 264. ISBN 978-0-520-22225-0. 
  4. ↑ Margit Rowell (1975). "František Kupka: A Metaphysics of Abstraction". František Kupka, 1871-1957: A Retrospective. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. p. 68. 
  5. ↑ "FRANTIŠEK KUPKA". The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 
Sources
  • Fauchereau, Serge (1989). Kupka. Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-1047-5. 
  • Kupka, František. La Création dans Les Arts Plastiques. Paris, 1923; edited and translated E. Abrams, 1989.

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