• Her painting Asteroid sold at Christie's in Amsterdam in 2023 for EUR 8,190 including the buyer's premium
• In recent years she has been presented at Kvalitář gallery, the NTK gallery and Pragovka Gallery in Prague, the Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny and Industra Art in Brno

Julie Kopová is one of the young, progressive artists working in abstract painting today. Between 2015 and 2021 she passed through the studios of Jiří Sopko, Robert Šalanda and Vladimír Skrepl at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and during her studies she also spent an exchange semester at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. Julie also holds a master's degree in Philosophy from Charles University in Prague. Her work draws interest well beyond collectors, as confirmed for instance by the recent sale of one of her paintings at Christie's for EUR 8,190 including the buyer's premium. In recent years the artist has been presented by major Czech institutions such as Kvalitář gallery, the NTK gallery and Pragovka Gallery in Prague, the Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny and Industra Art in Brno.

Julie Kopová's working principles make for an intriguing fusion of automatism and concept in abstract painting. In her expressive canvases and drawings she gives room to intuition and freedom, yet she always starts from a clear initial intention and from the laws of space and composition. She does not place herself categorically in painting alone: she interweaves painting with music and with various other creative processes that leave their mark on the finished works in equal measure. She handles the means of drawing and painting generously, at times combining them, at others setting them at opposite ends of the creative spectrum. Her singular thinking about fields of colour and the relations between them opens up philosophical questions as well as more tangible sources of inspiration such as landscape or music. "Philosophy breaks the basic concepts of life down into their prime factors, and that is exactly what I enjoy in art as well. In my drawings I am often inspired by landscape or by music, whose rhythm and composition I try to reflect," Julie explains. Expressive fields of colour set against one another can call up contradictory emotions, and empty areas have their own indispensable place in her paintings. "For me emptiness is not emptiness, but another equal component of the picture.

profile photo: Klára Dudáková