Artist: Frantisek Kupka
František Kupka (Opo?no, Bohemia oriental, 23 de septiembre de 1871 -Puteaux, Francia, 24 de junio de 1957) fue un pintor y artista gráfico checoconsiderado como uno de los pioneros y co-fundador de las primeras etapas del arte abstracto y cubismo órfico (orfismo). Las obras abstractas de Kupka surgieron de una base de realismo, pero más tarde evolucionaron hasta el arte abstracto puro.
Desde 1889 hasta 1892, estudió en la Academia de Arte de Praga. En esta época pintó temas históricos y patrióticos. Posteriormente, entró en laAkademie der Bildenden Künste de Viena, Austria, donde se concentró en temas simbólicos y alegóricos. Expuso en el Kunstverein, Viena, en 1894. Su implicación con la teosofía y la filosofía oriental data de este periodo. Para la primavera del año 1896, Kupka se había establecido en París; allí acudió a la Académie Julian brevemente y luego estudió con Jean-Pierre Laurens en la Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Kupka trabajó como ilustrador de libros y carteles, durante estos primeros años en París, siendo conocido por sus dibujos satíricos para periódicos y revistas. En 1906, se estableció enPuteaux, un suburbio de París, y ese mismo año expuso por primera vez en el Salón 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 representative style; his work became progressively abstract around 1910–1911, reflecting his theories of movement, color, and the relationship between music and painting (orphism). From 1911 to 1912, at the same time as the French painter Robert Delaunay, Kupka made his first completely abstract works, such as Amorfa: fugue de dos colores (1912, Národní Gallery in Prague), consisting of colored circular shapes and lines arranged in an arrangement. rhythmic. In 1911, he attended meetings of the Puteaux group. The following year, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in the Cubist Room, although he did not want to be identified with any movement. Creation in the Plastic Arts, a book that Kupka finished in 1913, was published in Prague in 1923. He continued to experiment within abstraction, and grouped his artistic work into five categories: circles, verticals, verticals and diagonals, triangles and diagonals. 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 MoMA in New York, and in a major show with another excellent 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 widespread recognition and had several one-man shows in New York. However, he was not as influential a painter as others in the abstract movement, so he did not receive the recognition he deserved until after his death. Between 1919 and 1938 Kupka was supported financially by his good friend, the art collector and industrial entrepreneur Jind? Ich Waldes who accumulated a significant collection of his art. Kupka died in Puteaux, France, on June 24, 1957. Kupka had a strong interest in color theory; Around 1910 he began to develop his own color wheels, adapting a format that Sir Isaac Newton and Hermann von Helmholtz had previously explored. This work in turn led Kupka to execute a series of paintings that he called "Newton's Disks" (1911-1912). Kupka was interested in freeing colors from descriptive associations. His work in this area is believed to have influenced other artists such as Robert Delaunay.
