Towards a New Era : Kupka, Graphic Works, 1894-1912

After he settled in Paris in 1894, Kupka emerged as one of the most important draughtsmen in satiric papers and, a few years later, as one of the very great illustrators of literature and of writings from the Antiquity.
This exhibition is the first to offer an in-depth study of this aspect of this aspect of figurative art by the artist that has until now been eluded due to the historical and esthetical importance of his abstract work. His graphical art prior to his abstract period has only been tackled in parts as it was considered mostly as a prelude to the blossoming of his genius.
The exceptional loans consented allow the reconstitution of cycles of illustrations, for instance for the review L'Assiette au Beurre or the text by Elisée Reclus L'Homme et la Terre. This exhibition extends the knowledge of Kupka's art as well as that of the history of illustration in the years 1890 up to the immediate pre-war period, and it ends with the stunning series of pastels of the 1910's, in which the turn to abstraction takes place with the decomposition of planes by colours.