František Kupka
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
František Kupka was a Czech painter and illustrator who was involved with Theosophy and Eastern philosophy. With Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and others, he established a movement of non-representational abstract art.
Personal Life and Education
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
František Kupka was born on September 23, 1871, in Opocno in eastern Bohemia (now the Czech Republic)to a family of modest means. Kupka was inspired by stained glass and gothic cathedrals at an early age. During his childhood in Boehemia, he apprenticed for a saddler who was a spiritualist and led a secret society. (Tuchman p. 35.) Kupka was drawn to spirituality and became a medium. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1889 to 1892, and then moved to Vienna to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. He was stimulated by artists and the environment in Vienna, and this is where he first got involved with Theosophy and eastern religions.[1] In 1894, he moved to Paris. He served as a volunteer in World War I. In 1906, he settled in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris. He was an avid meditator and vegetarian. He passed away on June 24,1957. His funeral was held in a secret place by a secret society.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag
Like Kandinsky, Kupka focused on color, proportions, and forms that could be biomorphic or geometric. His views were similar to the Belgian Symbolists like Jean Delville.
Working in Paris alongside the Cubists in the early 1910s, Kupka became interested in theories concerning vibration, radiation, and the emission of waves; scientific themes that were very popular in occult and Theosophical circles at the time. Coincidentally, he was also influenced by synaesthetic theories concerning the unity of music and color (the "color" of sound), current in the avant-garde and in certain Theosophical circles. Kupka combined these with the Theosophical idea that nature manifests itself rhythmically in geometric forms.
His Theosophical syncretic vision of science and the spiritual coincided with Steiner's vision of the unity of science, art and religions. It determined the subject matter of Kupka's art: the dynamic process of the universe.[2]
Associations between colors and musical notes were of great interest to Kupka and Kandinsky, and the color chards in the Besant-Leadbeater book Thought Forms were influential. Kupka explored relationships science, the spiritual, and music in works like the Disks of Newton or Study for 'Fugue in Two Colors', painted in 1912.
Additional resources
Additional Resources
Exhibitions and Museum Collections
MoMA, https://www.moma.org/artists/3302-frantisek-kupka Guggenheim, New York, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/frantisek-kupka Museum Kampa, https://www.museumkampa.cz/vystava/kupka-gutfreund-en/ Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artists/35358/frantisek-kupka
Videos
SASIG #19: Prof. Fay Breuer presents Composing “Symmorphies”: Frantisek Kupka’s Chromatic Music, September 21, 2024, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cDnxqUGrL1I
Frantisek Kupka: Pioneer de l’abstraction (documentary in French with English subtitles, Ramon Kastner, December 25, 2022, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ7GcQFSa-w
Notes
- ↑ See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/František_Kupka
- ↑ Tessel M. Bauduin, "Abstract Art as 'By-Product of Astral Manifestation': The Influence of Theosophy on Modern Art in Europe" Handbook of the Theosophical Current (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 437.
