KUPKA, FRANTIEK

also called Frank Kupka, or Franois Kupka born Sept. 23, 1871, Opocno, Bohemia died June 24, 1957, Puteaux, Fr. Czech-born French pioneer of abstract painting and one of the first completely nonrepresentational artists. His mature works contributed much to the foundations of pure abstract painting in the 20th century. Kupka studied at the Prague and Vienna academies and at the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he settled in 1895. In 190811 he experimented with Fauvism and with Pointillism, the latter a technique originating with the French painter Seurat, whose colour-contrast theories led Kupka to study the aesthetic properties of colours. Kupka, in his painting Disks of Newton (1912; Philadelphia Museum of Art), and Robert Delaunay, in his similar Disks (1912), were the earliest exponents of curvilinear pure abstraction. This art was dubbed Orphisman art of musical colour lyricismby the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912. Kupka painted abstractions with such titles as Fugue in Red and Blue (1912; Nrodn Galerie, Prague), making explicit his belief that abstract colour, like music, is capable of evoking profound feeling.