The directory «Artists»

Kupka Frantisek
(1871—1957)

Frantisek Kupka was born in Czechoslovakia, but worked mostly in France. He studied in Prague and Vienna before settling in Paris around 1895. He began working as an illustrator while creating Symbolist and Fauvist paintings on the side. His lifetime interest in spirituality inspired his concern with color and he made it his goal to pick colors for their rhythmic effects. After 1909, Kupka began experimenting with motion similar to the Futurists. His abstract series, Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colors was completed in 1912 and caused commotion at the Salon d’Automne of that year. Kupka served in the military during World War I and also designed propaganda posters. Post war, the Prague Academy gave him the position of professor in Paris, where his job was to introduce Czech students to France. In 1931, he helped found the Abstraction-Creation group, taking on a more geometrical style in his later life.

Czech Republic, 2002, Rodin and Mucha in Prague