František Kupka from the Jan and Meda Mládek collection

Detail knihy ~ František Kupka from the Jan and Meda Mládek collection, Mladkova, Meda - Jancar, Ivan - Jirmusova, Hana - Sonnberger, Gerwald - Koncinska, Claudine - Sekera, Jan

his is a cornerstone of the Jan and Meda Mládek collection. Its price is today already virtually inestimable. It consists of 215 studies, drawings and paintings, and ranks alongside the world's most comprehensive collections of its kind,

The collection encompasses the artist´s lifelong production, starting with early studies and paintings dating from the 1890s, through sketches from the turn of the century, and expressive figure drawings from the period immediately preceding the stage during which Kupka embraced abstraction.

The collection also comprises various studies for book illustrations (e.g.,for The Song of Songs), and designs of decorative carpet patterns. Particularly fine items include a watercolor study for Bathing Woman (1906), or study for Gigolettes (1908 - 1909). Of key importance for Kupka's artistic development are purely abstract studies for Newton's Circles (1911 - 1912), and for the painting, Around a Point (1911 - 1930).

Of similar relevance are preparatory drawings for Fugue in Two Colors (1911 - 1912), as well as a series of studies for Cosmic Spring: Creation (1911 - 1920), for A Story of Pistils and Stamens (1911 - 1919), and for Four Stories of White and Black. Previously one of the Collection's finest - and largest - paintings, Localization of Graphic Motifs II (1912 - 1913), was donated by the Mládeks to Washington's National Gallery of Art, where it has since been prominently displayed. One of Kupka's most impressive paintings, in this collection and beyond, is Cathedral (1912 - 1913). Significant for the artist's development are studies for Vertical Planes (1912 - 1913), and Warm Chromatics. Meda Mládek's first encounter with the art of František Kupka took place at the time of her studies of Art History in Paris, in 1955, and she has been an avid collector of his work ever since then. Nowadays no major Kupka retrospective would be imaginable without a loan of studies and paintings from her collection..

František Kupka from the Jan and Meda Mládek collection