(b Opocno, 22 Sept 1871; d Puteaux, Paris,
21 June 1957).
Bohemian painter and graphic artist, active in France. A
pioneer of European abstract painting, he first trained at
the School of Arts and Crafts at Jaromer under Alois
Studnicka (1842–1927). From 1887 until 1891 he studied at
the Prague Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Frantisek
Sequens (1836–96), a late Nazarene, who directed an atelier
of religious painting. He continued his studies at the
Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna (1892–3), under
Professor August Eisenmenger (1830–1907). In 1894 he met the
painter and natural philosopher Karl Diefenbach (b
1851), who impressed him with his ideas of a return to
nature. Kupka’s paintings of this period (e.g. Quam ad
causam sumus?, ?1894) are untraced. In 1895 he settled
in Paris, earning his living as an illustrator for
periodicals. In 1899 he exhibited a genre painting, the
Bibliomaniac (Prague, N.G., Trade Fair Pal.), at the
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts without notable success. He
first achieved fame with his satirical cycles in anarchistic
style, Money, Religion, Peace (all
Prague, N.G., Kinsky Pal.), published as lithographs in the
periodical L’Assiette au beurre between 1901 and
1904. At the beginning of the century he worked on a
Symbolist cycle (1900–03; Prague, N.G., Trade Fair Pal.) in
coloured aquatints: Defiance: Black Idol, Quiet
Road and Beginning of Life. His Symbolist period
culminated in Ballad: Joys of Life (1901–2; Prague,
N.G., Trade Fair Pal.), in which elements of naturalism,
Symbolism and the decorative stylization of the period were
combined. In his preparatory drawings for the cycle the use
of luminous colour makes the figures appear ethereal. |
