Alfred Freddy Krupa

Alfred Freddy Krupa by Dinko Neskusil (2019)

Alfred Freddy Krupa, Expression of the Present, 2013

Alfred Freddy Krupa, Tree on the Riverbank, 2014

Alfred Freddy Krupa (Krūppa) (14 June 1971, Karlovac, Yugoslavia) is a Croatian contemporary artist (painter, master draughtsman, book artist, art photographer and art teacher).

Krupa, the author of the "New Ink Art Manifesto" (1996), is considered one of the pioneers of the New Ink Art movement and as one of the leading representatives of the modern European ink painting. The original manuscript of the New Ink Art Manifesto is the property of the documenta archiv, records and papers collection (Aktenarchiv) in Kassel (the access number docA-97).

On 23rd April 2013, the Tokyo-based online magazine Beyond Calligraphy published Krupa's second programmatic text under the title "Sumi-e from the Perspective of a Traditional Academically-trained European Artist" where the artist further explains his own original views and again declares his artistic program (sometimes it is referred to as the 2nd New Ink Art Manifesto).

Višnja Lasić from the Karlovac City Museums (the curator and the former museum director) with the publisher ITG-Zagreb and photographer Z. Gerber authored the art monograph 'Alfred Freddy Krupa' in 2014. The monograph attracted the attention of professional audiences and became part of many important museums and university libraries including the Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Princeton and Harvard University, Zurich University, TATE Britain - London, Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library and others

In 2014 Krupa created an artist's book "Modern Ink Painting, what is it? or the Original Art Work", in 2021 collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA)

In 2022 Todd Dobbs and Aileen Benedict from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (NC, USA) & Zbigniew Ras from the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology (Warsaw, Poland) in the peer-reviewed article "Jumping into the artistic deep end: building the catalogue raisonné" used in its research dataset, among 90 artists, 598 artworks of Alfred Freddy Krupa.

Krupa has set the world record for the largest drawing created using swan and goose feathers (spathe) as paintbrushes. On 10-11 January 2023, in the drawing room of Duga Resa High School – Graphic Design Department – under monitored conditions, Krupa drew a drawing with ink and swan and goose feathers on a raw canvas of 69×892 format called ‘My Panoramas’. That work was recognized as the largest of its kind and a world record by the American organization RecordSetter.

At the proposal of the State Commission for Awards and Recognition of the Republic of Croatia, the President of the Republic of Croatia, Zoran Milanović, awarded the painter Alfred Freddy Krupa the Order of Danica Hrvatska ( “Order of the Croatian Morning Star” or simply “Order of the Croatian Star”) with the image of Marko Marulić, ‘for special merits in the field of culture and exceptional contribution to the promotion of Croatian fine arts in the country and abroad’.

New Ink Art

Artists associated with the New Ink Art movement: Lui Shou-Kwan, Chui Tze-Hung, Wong King-Seng, Yu-Ichi, Qiu Anxiong, Lin Fengmian, Kan Tai-Keung, Leung But-Yin, Zhu Yu, Gu Wenda Xu Beihong, Carrie Koo Mei, Alfred Freddy Krupa, Wang Tiande, Irene Chou Lu Yun, Yeung Yick-Chung, Qin Yufen, Liu Dan, Yang Yiechang, Irène Wydler, Wang Chuan, Daniel Garbade, Dayou Lu , Li Chevalier and others.

Publications

• "New Ink Art Manifesto", 1996
• "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
• Drawing with Ink (an article written in 1994), published in the book Texts (1994 - 2017), Alfred Freddy Krupa, ISBN: 9781364027797, 2018 [1]
• Mislite! Think!, Alfred Freddy Krupa, ISBN 978-953-6540-86-0, 2020 [2]