František Kupka

Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco, no. C-5180
Gallery Gertrude Stein, New York
Private Collection, California
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 9 May 2002, lot 270
Purchased at the above sale

Riverside, University of California Art Gallery, The Cubist Cycle, 1971, no. 14
Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham Museum of Art, Pražské noci / Prague Nights: Czech Modern Art from the Hascoe Collection, 2007

Jiří Hlušička, The Hascoe Collection of Czech Modern Art, Prague, 2004, pp. 8 & 26, mentioned; p. 193, no. P45, catalogued; p. 174, pl. 160, illustrated

This condition report has been provided by Hamish Dewar Ltd. Fine Art Conservation, 14 Masons Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BU. UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The painting is unlined and attached to the original wooden fixed stretcher. The canvas is slightly slack and uneven. There is a torn square of paper adhered to the canvas beneath the central horizontal stretcher-bar as viewed from the reverse. There are some small pin holes in the centre of the two circles in the upper right quadrant, and one slightly larger hole off-centre in the lower central circle close to the right hand framing edge. These appear to be contemporary to the execution of the work. Paint surface The paint surface has the artist's original unvarnished surface. There are some small paint losses, the largest of which are in the concentric circles in the upper right quadrant. There are some areas of slight drying craquelure but these appear stable. Inspection under ultra-violet light does not appear to show evidence of any retouching. Summary The painting therefore appears to be in very good and stable condition and would benefit from infilling and retouching of minor paint losses.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Painted circa 1933, Le Sourire I (The Smile) is a dynamic vision of a world increasingly determined by technology. This composition of machine discs in perpetual motion connected by crank shafts in rhythmic movement shares traits with the work of Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant who had together founded Purism, a style intended as a rational, mathematically based corrective to the impulsiveness of Cubism, which Kupka eschewed. In subject, and with its flat two-dimensionality, bold paint surfaces, and forms reduced to their most basic form, the painting also comes very close to the 'paysages méchaniques' of Fernand Leger (fig. 1).  

Similar to Fernand Léger, Kupka had ambivalent feelings about the modern age. Like his French contemporary, serving in the First World War brought him face to face with the horrors of mechanised warfare. Le Sourire I may be a celebration of progress, but the factories responsible for that progress were also churning out weapons for the war effort and contributing to the annihilation of humanity. Like Divertimento II (lot 46), the title of the painting is deliberately ambiguous. On the one hand the smile is a nod to the Purists and the return to the clear ordered forms of the modern age; on the other, a smile of resignation in the face of the intractable advance of technology.

Fig. 1 : Fernand Leger, Les Disques, 1918  © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2011