Woman Picking Flowers 1909

"Woman Picking Flowers" was made by Frantisek Kupka, and its a pastel on paper. It’s all about how Kupka playfully lays down these marks, smudging and layering to conjure the scene. It really feels like he’s finding the image, rather than just copying something he already sees. Look at how the yellow bleeds into the pink and blue, creating this luminous, almost dreamlike space. It’s like the colors themselves are breathing. Notice the way the vertical strokes of blue and pink suggest the figure's form. There's this one bold blue stroke right down the middle, almost like a spine, giving the whole composition a jolt of energy. Kupka, like Kandinsky, was all about pushing painting towards abstraction. He had this idea that art could be like music, pure sensation and emotion. You might also think about the Fauves like Matisse, who were using color in similarly expressive ways around the same time, it's all one big conversation. In the end, art is an ongoing experiment. What do you see?