The story of František Kupka, the father of abstract art
«I remember that when I got to his house, an old man opened the door. I told him I was a Czechoslovak art student in exile and that I would love to see his paintings. He was very pleased because in that period no one used to visit him: the Czechs couldn’t do so and the French were no longer interested in him. When we got to his studio and saw his paintings, I became ecstatic and told him they were exceptional, wonderful, extraordinary! I wanted to buy a painting, and he, the poor Kupka, was so happy about it that he would have given me his whole collection. I chose one painting, and he sold it for about $50, and it was his wife who decided». Meda Mládková, the greatest Czech art collector and founder of the Kampa Museum in Prague, recalls her first encounter with František Kupka in 1956, a year before the death of the Czech artist, at his home in Puteaux, a village on the banks of the Seine near Paris. The retired painter, who was now quite old – but pleased to sell one of his canvases to a student who had come to see him – is now considered one of the most famous and “expensive” Czech artists in the world. His paintings are exhibited from Paris to New York, and is now recognized as the father of abstract art, along with Kandinsky, Mondrian and Delaunay. However, Kupka had always defied any form of classification: «Is my painting considered abstract art? Why? Painting is a tangible thing: colours, shapes and dynamics. What really matters is creativity. You have to invent, then build on it».
And Kupka had always done so with fury and great enthusiasm, just as an artist that is worthy of that name. He was born in Opočno, in eastern Bohemia in 1871, and when he was still quite young he was introduced to spiritualism by a professor, who formed him for his entry exam at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He was admitted to the school in 1889 and was trained in historical and sacred paintings. In 1892, after obtaining his diploma, he left for Vienna, where he intended to follow art classes at the Academy. These were the last years of the century in the capital of the empire, which was animated by an extraordinary cultural effervescence: Gustav Klimt had started painting, Karl Kraus was writing for the theatre and about philosophy, while Freud had already started his psychoanalytic work. The young Czech painter then continued his artistic formation, based on a classical style until 1899 when from the Vienna Academy he took to the streets of Paris. The ville lumière, which was then an attraction for artists and writers from all over Europe. In the district of Montmartre he began his bohemian life: Kupka lived and worked in these small streets that lead up to the most famous hill of the French capital. These are the years of Picasso, Modigliani and of crazy nights spent in cafés and the years of the great avant-garde, that reinvented the art of the twentieth century: impressionism, cubism, abstract art.
Kupka lived through all of it, participating actively and frequented painters and poets. Initially, he devoted himself to illustrations for magazines and posters. From 1907, he collaborated with the weekly L’Assiette au beurre, a socialist and anarchic oriented publication, but he began to develop anti-clerical and anti-royalist sentiments, and his illustrations became harsh and offensive against those whom he considered oppressors and exploiters. In the meantime, he continued intensely his artistic research and followed courses in psychology, biology, optics, mechanics and archaeology at the Sorbonne. Understanding history and the world were of great importance to him: it nourished his ceaseless painting experimentation. The break from figurative art took place in 1910. The fact that it happened in Paris is not a mere chance, the capital was a breeding ground for a new type of art that broke away from tradition. In 1912, at the Autumn Salon, his famous Fugue in two colors oil painting was exhibited. At the Salon des Indépendants other works were also displayed, but this time together with cubist paintings, the strong movement of that period. A decisive work in his artistic journey towards non-figurative art is Madame Kupka among verticals, in which a painted image unravels itself into a horizon of shapes and colours. Another crucial year for the Czech artist was 1914, when Kupka decided to put away his brushes and join the army. He was sent to the Somme front to fight against the German troops and was placed in the same company as his friend, the poet Cendrars. In 1915, he became seriously ill and thus had to return to Paris, where he started mobilizing the Czech resistance in the French capital. He soon became president of the Czech colony in France, that gathered the associations of his countrymen on the territory. In 1918, he was sent again to the military front under the command of Marshal Foch, ended the war with the rank of captain and was awarded the Legion of Honour. At the end of the first world war he took up his artistic work again, that had been left unfinished, and continued his work from his home in Puteaux, where he lived with his wife Eugénie Straub. His style became progressively more figurative. In 1921, a first retrospective of his work of art was held at the Povolozky gallery in Paris and two years later he was appointed Professor at Art Academy in Prague, where he had started his artistic training. He was flattered and liked the place, but he preferred to stay in Paris and take care of the Czech scholarship winners, who were then coming to the Country. He took refuge in Beaugency, south of the capital, during the Second World War, and was only able to return to Puteaux when the war ended, where he lived and worked until he was an old man. It is in this village, in the French countryside, that the paths of Meda Mládková and the Bohemian painter were destined to cross. Since then, Mládková has never stopped buying and collecting the paintings of her compatriot. Over the years she has collected more than two hundred of them, which she has decided to donate to her country, the Czech Republic. It is she, in fact, who fought hard and made possible the opening of the Kampa Museum in Prague in 2002, that now hosts a considerable part of his private collection. Meda Mládková had promised the artist – just before his death – that she would have done her best to organize an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. A promise that was never kept. However, more than half a century later and thanks to her great effort, Kupka is now one of the most popular and well-known contemporary artists in the world. The Kampa Museum is now his new home: in the heart of the city where this story began.
by Edoardo Malvenuti