Bohumil Kubišta was born on August 21, 1884, in Vlčkovice near Hradec Králové, and died on November 27, 1918, in Prague. This Czech painter, graphic artist, and art theorist is considered one of the founders of modern Czech painting. Together with Emil Filla, Antonín Procházka, and five other artists, he founded OSMU, a group of expressionistically oriented artists.

Bohumil Kubišta was an illegitimate son from a poor rural family, so his path to art was not easy, but he persevered. He was financially supported by his uncle, teacher Oldřich Kubišta. Even during his studies at the secondary school in Hradec Králové, he showed an interest in visual arts. He attended drawing and painting classes at the Industrial Museum and lectures by Max Dvořák on modern art. After graduating, he studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague from 1903, but the following year he transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied in the studio of Vlaho Bukovac. He didn't stay there long either, and due to conflicting views on the direction of visual art, he left the academy. In 1904, he joined the military and served at an officer training school in Pula. After completing his service, he traveled to Florence in 1906, where he became a student at the Reale instituto delle belle arti. In addition to drawing and painting, he also experimented with graphic arts. He was not satisfied with the academic style of teaching, so he left the school prematurely, before completing his first semester. In the autumn of 1906, he traveled through Europe with his friends Emil Filla and Antonín Procházka.

In the spring of 1907, he returned to Prague to join the activities of the art association Osma, which held its first exhibition. It attracted little public interest. Kubišta exhibited 14 works at the exhibition, including a self-portrait and pastels from Pula and Florence. At that time, he met F. X. Šalda, who became his supporter in the future. In the following period, he worked intensively, but he still faced existential problems. He almost never found buyers for his paintings. In November 1907, he enrolled to study architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague, but he only lasted one year.

With financial support from his uncle, he traveled to Paris in March 1909. He stayed there until the end of June, studying contemporary French art, especially the work of Paul Cézanne. He was also there as an unofficial representative of the groups Osma and Spolek výtvarných umělců Mánes, with the aim of arranging an exhibition of young French artists in Prague. He traveled to Paris again in December of the same year and remained there under difficult financial conditions until June 1910. In addition to his uncle's support, various theoretical articles and studies on visual art, which he wrote for F. X. Šalda, helped him overcome his financial problems. In Paris, he made contacts with French artists and gallery owners, as well as other German and Czech painters. In March 1910, he was accepted into the Mánes association.

From the middle of 1910, he lived and worked in Prague. He wrote critical articles about the older generation of landscape painters associated with the magazine "Dílo," which provoked the Czech art scene. He waged a relentless battle to promote a new artistic style. He became embroiled in a conflict with Josef Ullmann, who physically attacked Kubišta after Kubišta's reaction to the exhibition of a painting by an ass. The scandal was settled in court, and Ullmann apologized.

Kubišta was appointed secretary of the "Club for Old Prague." He ended his collaboration with Šalda's magazine "Novina" and wrote for "Česká kultura" and "Přehled." In the spring of 1913, his precarious financial situation forced him to re-enlist in the Austrian army. He was assigned to the coastal artillery in Pula, and these new duties curtailed his artistic activities. He served in Pula during World War I, even participating in the sinking of the French submarine Curie in December 1914. For this action, he received the military Leopold Order and was promoted from lieutenant to captain by the end of the war.

On October 27, 1918, Kubišta arrived in Prague on leave and, as one of the first, volunteered for the newly formed Czechoslovak army. Shortly after, he fell ill and died of the Spanish flu at the age of 34.

He is buried in the cemetery in Kukleny (which has been part of Hradec Králové since 1942). His gravestone, featuring a large relief and the inscription "To embrace life with a strong stroke," is the work of the sculptor František Bílek.

Bohumil Kubišta left behind 128 oil paintings and pastels, as well as a number of graphic works.

In 1920, thanks to his friend Jan Zrzavý, a posthumous exhibition of Kubišta's works was organized at the House of Artists of the Czech-German Fine Arts Association (Rudolfinum).

Kubišta was greatly influenced by Munch's exhibition in Prague in 1905, and between 1905 and 1907, he transitioned from academic post-impressionism to expressionism (e.g., "Self-Portrait in a Bathrobe," "Triple Portrait" with Bedřich Feigl and Arthur Pittermann-Longen (1907), "The Players," "Passengers in Third Class").

He participated in both exhibitions of the "Osma" group in 1907-1908. As a conceptually consistent and theoretically grounded individual, he became an unofficial spokesperson for the "Osma" group, defending new approaches to art in artistic presentations and fundamental theoretical reflections on the culture of the time.

"The significance of color lies in its having not only a harmonious, but a truly mystical symbolism," he wrote to Jan Zrzavý in 1915. He believed that modern art was based on the principle of "understanding and fulfilling the law," just like historical styles. He studied color theory (for example, he considered the contrast between red and green to be a clash between life and death), and analyzed the harmonic and compositional principles of both old and modern masters (El Greco, Eugene Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch). His paintings were based on a strict balancing of individual formal elements, and he applied complementary and simultaneous color relationships and compositional principles of the golden ratio (e.g., "Café," "Still Life with a Lamp," "The Smoker").

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