Richard Koppe [b. 1916: St. Paul, Minnesota – d. 1973: Chicago, Illinois]
acrylic on plywood
25 by 21 inches
Gift of George Irwin
Collection of the Illinois State Museum
Richard Koppe’s Bi-Space, executed near the end of his career, demonstrates his continuing interest in reconciling some of the elements of abstraction that are common to painting and sculpture such as light and value, color, and the dynamic balance between shape and form.
By 1969, Pop Art, with its emphasis on highly saturated color and celebration of the manufactured combined with its contempt for gestural brushwork, had influenced artists throughout the United States. Koppe has combined machined edges and his always consummate craftsmanship with whimsical shapes — really negative spaces — to create an abstract composition that carefully balances an association with the organic world against forms derived from geometry. An earlier work by Richard Koppe, Black Wires (1950), is also included in this web presentation.