Blue 1914

Frantisek Kupka created the oil painting, *Blue*, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Kupka, as a male artist in Paris, belonged to a modernist milieu that was investigating abstraction and new forms of expressing lived reality. Here, Kupka creates an emotional experience through color. Shades of blue emanate from the canvas, reaching outward into an almost architectural structure. The composition avoids the traditional representational forms, which allowed Kupka to investigate a spiritual and intellectual purity through abstraction. Kupka once said, "I believe that I can, without resorting to the representation of external appearance, portray purely psychic and emotional content." While abstract, the upward movement suggests an emotional or spiritual transcendence. In moving beyond the literal, Kupka evokes a range of powerful emotions.