Painter, printmaker, and art critic, Bohumil Kubišta was one of the pioneering figures in Czech modern art. After several periods studying fine art in Bohemia and Florence in the years 1903-1907, but without graduating, he returned to Prague. There, together with Emil Filla, he founded the artist group Osma. At the first group exhibition in 1907, Kubišta exhibited 14 works, but he struggled with existential difficulties. At that time, his Expressionist paintings found few buyers. In the same year, he enrolled to study architecture in Prague, but again dropped out after one year.
In 1909, with financial support from his uncle, he went to Paris, where he became fascinated by the work of Paul Cézanne. In the French capital, he also established contacts with numerous artists and gallery owners. Nevertheless, he could only overcome his difficult
material situation by writing about art. His stridently formulated theoretical essays advocated a new artistic style, which did not endear him to the conservative section of Czech society. Finally, in the spring of 1913, his dire financial situation forced him to join the Austrian army. He began his service in Pula (Istria), where he remained during the First World War. After the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic on 28 October 1918, he was one of the first to join the army of the newly founded state. Shortly afterwards, however, he fell victim to the 1918 flu pandemic and died at the age of just 34.
Bohumil Kubišta was mathematically gifted. He took a genuinely scientific approach to exploring the theory of the "new" painting: he studied the compositional rules of the golden section and deliberated on the geometry of pictorial space. His friend, the painter Jan Zrzavý, wrote of him: “All his pictures are precisely and firmly constructed. Nothing in them is accidental; superfluous things are left out, and only the factual, the essential, the truth itself, remains.”
Kubišta's Hanged Man of 1915 surpasses Cubism by far in terms of its subject matter and its carefully conceived composition. By employing a monochromatic colour scheme, Kubišta was turning away from the bright colours of the Fauvists. This small-format painting was admired by the Surrealists because it reflected their interest in irrationality and fantasy, as well as in magical art.
In 1911, two members of the Expressionist artist group Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Mueller, visited Kubišta in Prague. In August of the same year, Kubišta joined the group as a member and took part in the group exhibition of the Neue Secession in Berlin, and in the following year he participated in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne.
Daniel Pitín had the 1984 monograph about Bohumil Kubišta lying open on his desk in his studio in Holešovice, exactly on the page with the picture of the Hanged Man: “When I was a student or shortly after the Academy, I didn't like that period at all. I was strongly averse to it. After passing the age of 40, however, I began to be drawn towards it, and now I like that period very, very much.” Even for the photographer Ivan Pinkava and his "dark" portrait heads, Kubišta’s work is important due to its harmonious use of light and the magic of the moment depicted.
EPILEPTIC WOMAN, 1911
THE HANGED MAN, 1915
b. 1884 in Vlčkovice near Hradec Králové / Kingdom of Bohemia
d. 1918 in Prague