Four Stories in White and Black

František Kupka’s album of prints entitled Four Stories in White and Black was published in France in 1926. The album consists of 25 graphic sheets preceded by a title page and Kupka’s introductory text. As is suggested by its title, Kupka renounced colour, concentrating instead on the visual language of lines and forms. The four stories mean the four problems of morphology that Kupka explored in the album’s individual sections. Each section is comprised of six sheets and is introduced with a woodcut that indicates the theme developed in the ensuing sheets. The following stories are represented: organic, triangular, cosmic, vertical and diagonal. In two stories, Kupka returns to organic themes, the next two are the outcome of the artist’s creative search. Steadily, Kupka distances himself from natural forms towards entirely „invented motifs“, thus demonstrating a gradual transition to abstraction.