The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (258 page)

Kunstkammer
.

German term (literally ‘art chamber’) used to describe a type of collection of pictures and curious popular with
Renaissance
princes. The cabinet pieces in such collections (which were by no means confined to Germany) might include anything from a watch to a fossil. In 16th- and 17th-cent. inventories the term
Kunstkammerstück
means an object of art, a jewel, or a devotional article of particularly remarkable character or quality ordered specially for display in the
Kunstkammer
.

 
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(1871–1957).
Czech painter and graphic artist, active mainly in France, a pioneer of
abstract art
. He studied in Prague and Vienna, and settled in Paris in 1895 or 1896, working first mainly as a satirical draughtsman and book illustrator. From an early age he had been interested in spiritualism and the occult (later in theosophy), and from this grew an interest in the spiritual symbolism of colour. He came to the realization that a picture need not have a ‘subject’ and this laid the roots of his ambition to create paintings whose linear rhythms and colour schemes would produce effects similar to those of music—in his letters he sometimes signed himself ‘colour symphonist’. From 1909 (inspired by high-speed photography) he experimented—in a manner similar to that of the
Futurists
—with ways of showing motion, and by 1912 this had led him to complete abstraction in
Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colours
(NG, Prague). This created something of a sensation when exhibited at the
Salon
d'Automne in 1912. As with
Delaunay
and the
Orphists
, to whom his work is closely related, Kupka excelled at this stage in his career in the creation of lyrical colour effects. During the First World War Kupka enlisted in the Czech Legion; he fought on the Somme and he also did a good deal of propaganda work such as designing posters. After the war the Prague Academy appointed him a professor in Paris with the brief of introducing Czech students there to French culture. In 1931 he was one of the founder members of the
Abstraction-Création
group. His later work was in a more geometrical abstract style. Although Kupka gradually established a considerable reputation, his pioneering role in abstraction was not generally realized before the 1960s.

 
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(1882–1935).
French-born sculptor who emigrated to the USA in 1906 and became an American citizen in 1916. He was one of the pioneers of modern sculpture. Lachaise settled first in Boston, then in 1912 moved to New York, where he became assistant to Paul
Manship
. Lachaise was a consummate craftsman in stone, metal, and wood (his father was a cabinet maker), but his most characteristic works are in bronze. He did a number of portrait busts remarkable for their psychological insight and he earned a good deal of his living from decorative animal sculptures, but is best known for his female nudes—monumental and anatomically simplified figures, with voluptuous forms and a sense of fluid rhythmical movement (
Standing Woman
, Whitney Mus., New York, 1912–27). Their smooth modelling links them with the work of
Nadelman
, who was also at this time helping to lead American sculpture away from the 19th-cent. academic tradition, but Lachaise's figures are more powerful than those of Nadelman and have an overt sexuality that has caused them to be compared with the nudes of
Renoir
. The inspiration for the figures Lachaise's embodiment of female beauty was Isabel Dutaud Nagle , a married American woman with whom he fell in love when he was about 20; she was the reason for his move to America and he was eventually able to marry her in 1917.

 
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(
c.
1592–1642).
Dutch painter, active for much of his career (
c.
1625–39) in Rome. There he was nicknamed ‘Il Bamboccio’ (which may be translated as ‘Little clumsy one’) on account of his deformed body. His self-portrait in the Pallavicini Gallery in Rome suggests that he bore his handicap bravely and without bitterness, and he was one of the leaders of the
Schildersbent
, a fraternal organization set up by the Netherlandish artists in Rome to protect their interests. Van Laer was the first artist to specialize in scenes of street life in Rome. His work proved popular with collectors and he inspired numerous followers who were known as the ‘Bamboccianti’. They were mainly other Northerners working in Rome, such as the Flemings Jan Miel (1599–1663) and Michiel
Sweerts
, but also included Italians such as Michelangelo
Cerquozzi
and Viviano Codazzi (1611–72). Their pictures are called
bambocciate
(the singular is
bambocciata
—Italian for childishness) or in French
bambochades
; an English equivalent—bambocciade—exists, but it is rarely used. In 1639 van Laer returned to his native Haarlem.

 
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