ALFRED FREDDY KRUPA | NEW INK ART

ALFRED FREDDY KRUPA | NEW INK ART

Alfred Freddy Krupa MFA (1971) grandson and student of Alfred Krupa sr. (Poland, 1915 – Yugoslavia, 1989) graduated in 1995 at the Academy Of Fine Arts (ALU) of the University of Zagreb.

In 1998/99, as a postgraduate research student, he studied Japanese painting at Tokyo Gakugei University.
Krupa also studied Art History (postgraduate scientific study) at the University of Zagreb (1996/1997, 1997/1998). In 2005 he finished additional art education study and has been given the formal permanent title of “Professor of Drawing and Painting” by the Croatian State Institute for Education. (Today “Education and Teacher Training Agency”- ETTA/AZOO).
In his manifesto (New Ink Art Manifesto, 1996), Krupa describes his ink painting as an interpretation of western modern art with the means of East Asian ink technique, as a combination of contemporary painting and traditional Chinese-Japanese calligraphy.

This year, Alfred Krupa celebrates 30 years of public and artistic work (1990-2020). Today, he is considered the leading representative of Modern European ink painting and the pivotal figure in the Western New Ink Art movement.

As it was pointed out by reviewers and art critic:
“His contributions to this movement are well recorded and have helped promote a once-isolated style exclusively practiced in the far east, to western
culture” and Lui Shou-Kwan (1919-1975), credited with founding the New Ink Painting Movement and his followers (up to the present times), Reinterprets Chinese ink art in the form of Western ,Modernism.
“Krupa is doing something essentially opposite/different from Shou-Kwan; he reinterprets Western modernism in the form of Chinese ink art.”

Several times awarded Alfred Freddy Krupa (in various ways) has been presented on six continents, and his original works on paper can be researched at the Tate – London (Special Library Collection), Silesian Museum in Katowice (Poland), Modern Gallery – Zagreb, International Watercolor Museum in Fabriano (Italy), Orange Regional Art Gallery (Australia) and in many other collections.

Krupa’s important programmatic texts and writings, besides New Ink Art Manifesto (1996), include, among others, Sumi-e from the Perspective of A Traditional Academically-trained European Artist (2013), The Theory Of Strings/Theory Of Everything In The Modern (Ink) Painting Practice? (2017).

Krupa is considered among the most influential leaders of ink art…Freddy Krupa is known as a Western master of Contemporary (New) Ink Movement, who reinterprets modernism in calligraphy and Chinese ink art. His works are a fascinating mix of expressionism and original ink painting. Blending abstract and figurative, personal feelings and social landscape, traditional ink calligraphy elements, and new experiments, the artist creates layers of meanings in his masterpieces.
– Art Acacia Gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2019

Read the full article on Art Market Magazine Issue #52