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拍品专文
In František Kupka’s Sans titre, rhythmic ribbons of colorful gouache are transcribed using flowing touches of the artist’s brush, lending the forms a powerful energy, their edges quivering as if they are vibrating before the eye. This internal dynamism accentuates the radial movement of the composition as it spins outwards from the core, illustrating Kupka’s maxim that “everything in nature is in movement, whether observable or invisible” (quoted in J. Andêl and D. Kosinski, Painting the Universe: František Kupka, Pioneer in Abstraction, exh. cat., Dallas Museum of Art, 1997, p. 88). At the opening of Kupka’s first solo-exhibition in Paris in 1921, it was this vivid sense of tension and motion and their connection to natural phenomena, that the critic for Le Journal de people celebrated in his review: “These moving arabesques, they are the wind, they are the flame, they are the lightning, they are the waves, they are the sprays of geysers, they are the gushing of springs... everything that pulses with the enormous vitality of nature! And they are above all the representation of invisible elements, fluids, electricity, heat…” (quoted in Kupka—Pionnier de l’abstraction, exh. cat., Grand Palais, Paris, 2018, p. 274).
Kupka’s works on paper reveal the artist at his most experimental, the array of drawings and gouaches he created over the course of his career illustrating the degree of refinement and study that lay behind his pioneering abstract idiom. Employing a practice that was meticulous and reflective, Kupka often made extensive series of studies ahead of committing to an image, teasing out the visual possibilities and permutations of an idea before landing on a final composition. For his famed painting Amorpha, fugue à deux couleurs (Vachtová, no. 139; Národní Galerie, Prague), for example, he made over a dozen drawings of varying sizes in gouache and ink, examining the different iterations of the motif, shifting forms, reworking contours, accentuating various elements from one sheet to the next. Together, the artist’s works on paper demonstrate the progression and evolution of Kupka’s painterly vision, as he worked through different resolutions to reach the final, most dynamic image possible.
With its swirling confluence of bright, rippling color, Sans titre is a striking example of the vital energy that permeates these works. The vibrant interplay of tones and sense of centrifugal motion around a central nucleus bears affinities to Kupka’s paintings Conte de pistils et d’étamines (Vachtová, no. 206; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Lignes animées (Vachtová, no. 212; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris), both of which had their roots in concepts the artist had begun exploring prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Evoking the essential rhythms, laws and forces of the natural world, these works appear to draw inspiration from organic material, studying the processes of biological growth and regeneration.
For Kupka, the natural sciences opened his eyes to an exciting range of forms, from ice crystals and flower buds, to the patterns of airflow and clouds. “Today, scientific discoveries have an undeniable influence on artists, who in many ways, consciously or not, are the disciples of the latest thinkers,” he wrote, highlighting the inexhaustible source of inspiration that lay in these sources (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1997, p. 74). While living in Paris, he took the opportunity to attend lectures in physics, biology and physiology at the Sorbonne, expanding his knowledge on the latest innovations and discoveries. Kupka supplemented these classes by reading articles from the leading scientific journals and treatises of the day, finding a well of inspiration in their descriptions of various phenomena, studying recent breakthroughs in everything from chemistry to neurology, astronomy to microbiology. He was also fascinated by the ways in which technology was completely transforming our understanding of the world around us—from microscopes and the X-ray, to chronophotography and the zoetrope—revealing a universe of forms, structures and patterns that existed beyond our field of vision.
Kupka’s works on paper reveal the artist at his most experimental, the array of drawings and gouaches he created over the course of his career illustrating the degree of refinement and study that lay behind his pioneering abstract idiom. Employing a practice that was meticulous and reflective, Kupka often made extensive series of studies ahead of committing to an image, teasing out the visual possibilities and permutations of an idea before landing on a final composition. For his famed painting Amorpha, fugue à deux couleurs (Vachtová, no. 139; Národní Galerie, Prague), for example, he made over a dozen drawings of varying sizes in gouache and ink, examining the different iterations of the motif, shifting forms, reworking contours, accentuating various elements from one sheet to the next. Together, the artist’s works on paper demonstrate the progression and evolution of Kupka’s painterly vision, as he worked through different resolutions to reach the final, most dynamic image possible.
With its swirling confluence of bright, rippling color, Sans titre is a striking example of the vital energy that permeates these works. The vibrant interplay of tones and sense of centrifugal motion around a central nucleus bears affinities to Kupka’s paintings Conte de pistils et d’étamines (Vachtová, no. 206; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Lignes animées (Vachtová, no. 212; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris), both of which had their roots in concepts the artist had begun exploring prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Evoking the essential rhythms, laws and forces of the natural world, these works appear to draw inspiration from organic material, studying the processes of biological growth and regeneration.
For Kupka, the natural sciences opened his eyes to an exciting range of forms, from ice crystals and flower buds, to the patterns of airflow and clouds. “Today, scientific discoveries have an undeniable influence on artists, who in many ways, consciously or not, are the disciples of the latest thinkers,” he wrote, highlighting the inexhaustible source of inspiration that lay in these sources (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1997, p. 74). While living in Paris, he took the opportunity to attend lectures in physics, biology and physiology at the Sorbonne, expanding his knowledge on the latest innovations and discoveries. Kupka supplemented these classes by reading articles from the leading scientific journals and treatises of the day, finding a well of inspiration in their descriptions of various phenomena, studying recent breakthroughs in everything from chemistry to neurology, astronomy to microbiology. He was also fascinated by the ways in which technology was completely transforming our understanding of the world around us—from microscopes and the X-ray, to chronophotography and the zoetrope—revealing a universe of forms, structures and patterns that existed beyond our field of vision.