Property from a Private collection

FRANTISEK KUPKA (CZECH 1871-1957)
Le disque blanc
signed Kupka (lower right)
lithograph
image: 43.3 x 43.3 cm (17 x 17 in)
Published in 1950

PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Cologne, acquired in the 1970s-1980s; thence by descent to the present owner

The present lot is after an oil Kupka painted in 1946, Disque blanc, at the culmination of his development as one of the leading avant-garde abstract painters during the interwar period. The oil was also used for a poster for an exhibition organised by the Karel Flinker Gallery in 1960.

Kupka was an intellectual artist who studied colour, optics, physiology, cosmology and anthropology, subjecting his studies to his aesthetic concerns. He aimed for his art to have a conceptual basis and in Disque blanc Kupka explores the interaction and separation of colour and of forms and shapes. The artist also explores the relationship between the earth and the solar system; the orange disc evokes of the rising or setting sun.