Kupka (F. Kupka) - Vertical Arrangement

Kupka (F. Kupka, 1871–1957), a Czech painter and one of the founders of 20th-century abstract painting, was directly inspired by Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism, creating structures ranging from the purest to the most complex. You may have listened to music, but have you truly appreciated it? What does music look like in visual arts? At the beginning of this century, Kupka wrote radically: "I am still groping; I wish to explore something between the visual and the auditory. I hope to create fugues with color, just as Bach created music." In his nearly abstract work Woman Picking Flowers (1909–1910), vertical lines gradually became prominent within musical rhythm. By 1911, he radically abandoned subject matter. Vertical lines, resembling musical notes, became the main body of his pure forms; he juxtaposed regular vertical lines of varying lengths, widths, and sizes, like a colored piano keyboard, playing out various improvisations. In 1912, Kupka wrote: "The sequential appearance of vertical lines is like its most energetic, most abstract, most generous, and most absolute... The vertical line stands like a person suspended above and below, leaning toward each other, transparent yet silent, forming the concept of space."