Kupka, František (or Frank Kupka, François Kupka) (
b Opočno, Bohemia, 22 Sept. 1871;
d Puteaux, Paris, 24 June 1957). Czech painter and graphic artist, active mainly in France, a pioneer of
abstract art. He studied in Prague and Vienna, and settled in Paris in 1895 or 1896, working first mainly as a satirical draughtsman and book illustrator; his paintings of the time were influenced by
Symbolism and then
Fauvism. From an early age he had been interested in the supernatural (later in Theosophy), and from this grew a concern with the spiritual symbolism of colour. It became his ambition to create paintings whose colours and rhythms would produce effects similar to those of music, and in his letters he sometimes signed himself ‘colour symphonist’. From 1909 (inspired by high-speed photography) he experimented—in a manner similar to that of the
Futurists—with ways of showing motion, and by 1912 this had led him to complete abstraction in
Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colours (NG, Prague). This created something of a sensation when exhibited at the
Salon d'Automne in 1912. As with
Delaunay and the
Orphists, to whom his work is closely related, Kupka excelled at this stage in his career in the creation of lyrical colour effects.
At the outbreak of the First World War Kupka volunteered for military service; he fought on the Somme and he also did a good deal of propaganda work such as designing posters. After the war the Prague Academy appointed him a professor in Paris with the brief of introducing Czech students there to French culture. In 1931 he was one of the founder members of the
Abstraction-Création group. His later work was in a more geometrical abstract style. Although Kupka gradually established a considerable reputation, his pioneering role in abstraction was not generally realized in his lifetime. The re-evaluation of his career began with an exhibition of his work at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1958, a year after his death.
