Étude pour "Conte de Pistils et d'étamines"

The Czech painter Kupka spent much of his career in Paris where he identified the need for a form of art beyond the modernists and academics dominating the Parisian art scene at the turn of the century. With the outbreak of World War I, Kupka enlisted with the Allies before eventually being wounded at the front and returning to Paris. In the years following, Kupka worked feverishly towards developing his abstract style, exploring a number of themes including the hard geometric forms of machinery, the more fluid shapes of biology and nature, and the relationship between the terrestrial world and the cosmos beyond.

This study comes from the early 1920’s, the most prolific and inspired period of his career. The series ‘Conte de Pistils et d’étamines’ was one of Kupka’s most ambitious series of paintings, and this flashing, vibrant watercolour perfectly captures the ingenious method with which Kupka translated the most fundamental forms of nature into paint. The oils that this work was a study for are in different museums in Europe, most notably the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.