Kupka Pionnier de l’abstraction

“Kupka Pionnier de l’abstraction” is the title of the beautiful exhibition dedicated to him by the Grand Palais from 21st March to 30th July 2018.

The exhibition that we are presenting today is dedicated to the Czech painter František Kupka (1871–1957), who was born in Bohemia in 1871 and died in France in the early 50’s, where he had moved as a young man.

The title perfectly illustrates Kupka’s artistic development. Kupka arrived in Paris in 1895 where he found an artistic scene that was still, although not for long, dominated by an academic and celebratory art, soon to be overcome by Impressionism and swept away by the avant-gardes that revolutionized the art world forever.

While the last Pompiers still celebrated the countryside and its values, Cézanne filtered reality through the painter’s personal eye, and Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro showed nature as it had never been seen before.

In October 1900 a man arrived in Paris for the first time, his name was Pablo Picasso; nothing would ever be the same again.

This is the cultural-artistic whirlwind in which our painter found himself and he tackled it admirably.

Despite Kupka’s beginnings in the figurative style, he already gave a glimpse of his evolution that eventually led him to the highest peaks of artistic expression through radical experimentation.

I confess I did not know this artist, so the surprise was all the more pleasant.

Kupka’s style is varied, but the quality is always very high; he never falters nor is he ever complacent.

From his ultra-dynamically ‘futurist’ paintings, to abstraction in its purest forms, he shows a crystalline talent, rightly celebrated today at the Grand Palais.

A must see!!!

 

Kupka, Pioneer of Abstraction

Grand Palaias

from 21 March to 30 July 2018

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