Overview
František Kupka, also called Frank Kupka, or François Kupka, was a Czech-born French pioneer of abstract painting and one of the first completely nonrepresentational artists. His mature works contributed much to the foundations of purely abstract painting in the 20th century.
Kupka studied at the Prague and Vienna art academies and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he settled in 1895. In 1908-11 he experimented with Fauvism and with pointillism, a technique invented by the French painter Georges Seurat, whose colour-contrast theories led Kupka to study the aesthetic properties of colours.
Public collections
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Rennes, France
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne, Switzerland
Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE