Woman picking flowers

Center Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (France).

Pastel, watercolour and graphite on paper.

In a series of his pastel works, Frantisek Kupka experimented with the image of movement – he was deeply impressed by the “Futurism Manifesto” by Filippo Marinetti published in 1909. In this work, Kupka shows the successive phases of the movement of a woman rising from a chair and leaning toward flowers. Kupka indicated “different intensities of experience” by using the colour and thickness of the strokes. The colouring corresponds to chromatic progression from cool to warm as the movement develops, and the blur between the individual contours indicates a transition from one phase to another. The blue silhouette contains the most concentrated colour depth and acts as a central axis – the composition revolves around this center. When creating this cycle, the artist relied both on chronography invented by Etienne-Jules Marey and the inventions of Futurists.