Bohumil Kubišta

The name of Czech painter Bohumil Kubišta is closely linked with the painting tendencies in Neo-Impressionism and, especially, Expressionism as well as Cubism. Kubišta studied at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague but also at several private art schools. In a very early age of 23, he participated at the two legendary exhibitions of the art group Osma (Eight), organized in 1907 and 1908, and he and his painter-colleague Emil Filla were the pillars of the arriving artistic generation. Kubišta was moreover a member of the Mánes Association of Fine Artists and the German group Die Brücke. Kubišta, however, was forced to cope with his existential troubles, and thus enlisted as a recruit in the military service of the Austrian-Hungarian army. His oeuvre was inspired by the well-known painters as Van Gogh, Munch, Daumiere, Cézanne and Braque. But his expression always remained specific and the artist always dealt with every influence of a painting tendency in his very own, specific way. His paintings often are wistful self-portraits and deal with diverse existentialist subjects (Still-Life with a Scull, Kiss of Death, Strung Up, Meditation). By an unfortunate turn of fate, one of the most gifted early 20th-century painters died of Spanish flu at the closing of the First World War. He nevertheless left behind a respectable oeuvre which can easily bear comparison in the framework of world painting.

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Bohumil Kubišta

* 1884, Vlčkovice u Hradce Králové, Czech Republic