by Philippe Dufour
Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), Le Cheval blanc, la chapelle Sainte-Anne devant la mer, Trégastel (The White Horse, Saint Ann’s Chapel before the Sea, Trégastel), 1909, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 54.5 x 81.5 cm (21.46 x 32.09 in). Estimate: €200,000/300,000
Frantisek Kupka was a leading abstract art pioneer, the precocious inventor of musical forms and rhythms. The two paintings from the “Amorpha” series that he exhibited at the 1912 Salon d’Automne were his first non-figurative works shown in France. That year, he and Marcel Duchamp joined the Section d’or, an avant-garde group for which poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term orphisme ( Orphism ). Before then, the young Czech painter, who had been living in Paris since 1896, explored many other artistic languages. To make a living, Kupka did illustrations for books and the satirical press, including L’Assiette au beurre (The Butter Dish) starting in 1901. Meanwhile, he pursued his personal work,…
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