Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) was a French painter often credited with painting the first abstract canvases based on theories of pure color around the year 1913.

Robert Delaunay was born in Paris on April 12, 1885, into a prominent family descended from French aristocracy; his mother used the title "Countess." His parents divorced when he was four years old, and he was subsequently raised by an aunt and uncle. An uninspired student, Delaunay did not pursue an education and instead apprenticed himself to a theater designer. Unlike most of the young painters of his generation, he had no formal art training. In 1910 he married Sonia Terk, a Russian painter who became a life-long collaborator and continued to work on shared ideas long after his death from cancer in 1941.

A prolific painter at an early age, Delaunay showed in the Salon exhibitions, the most important official shows in France, in his early 20s. He incorporated much of the restlessness of art during the first decade of the 20th century in his early work, passing through a Pointillist, a Nabi, then a Fauve phase. It was around 1912 that Delaunay came to believe that light could be expressed as pure color independent of any objective content. He declared that "color alone is form and content."

This idea ran counter to the Cubist ideas of Picasso and Braque, who were more interested in the analysis of physical form than in light. Cubist paintings between 1907 and 1913 are static and sculptural without emphatic color, whereas Delaunay's paintings of the same period are fluid and multi-chromatic. He began a series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower rendered in swinging arcs of color that suggest movement. The Cubists accused Delaunay of reverting to the optical effects of Cezanne, while Delaunay maintained that he was doing "pure" paintings that expressed the dynamism of the 20th century.

In 1913 he began a series of paintings of colored discs that have no reference to any object and are considered hallmark paintings in the evolution of abstract or nonobjective art. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire called Delaunay's new style of abstract work "Orphism" in reference to the musician Orpheus in Greek mythology whose music had magical powers. Early abstract artists found strong connections between their work and music because neither depended on the imitation of phenomena found in the natural world.

Delaunay's belief in the primacy of color over form placed him closer in temperment to the German Expressionist painters than to Cubists working in France. In 1911 he exhibited with the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group organized around Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky and he also showed in the Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin. He was caught in Spain at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and he stayed there and in Portugal with his wife and their son until 1921.

During this time he met Russian exiles Sergei Diaghilev, producer and choreographer of the famed Ballets/Russes, and the composer Igor Stravinsky. In 1918 the Delaunays designed costumes and decor for a Diaghilev production of Cleopatra. His wife worked along lines similar to her husband, applying their theories of color simultaneity—the interaction of colors in relationship to one another—to design as well as painting. She made clothing, fabric, wall-covering, upholstery, and furniture covered with patches of color. She had an automobile painted in this manner which was considered a shocking and innovative extension of an idea from the avant-garde into the world-at-large.

Back in Paris after the war Delaunay resumed painting in a semi-figurative manner somewhat in contradiction to his early theories of nonobjective art. He exhibited little during this time, and it is considered a period of regression in his work. He also painted frescos for which he invented new techniques for mixing additives to paint to create unusual textures and colors. He worked with painter Fernand Leger on murals for the International Exposition of Decorative Arts and he designed film and stage sets. He became friendly with artist Jean Arp and poet Tristan Tzara. In his 30s he continued to do commissioned wall paintings, completing a mural at the Palais des Chemin de Fer and at the Salon des Tuileries.

Delaunay's career as a painter was meteoric. He was a prominent spokesperson for a specific point of view at a time of much artistic fermentation in the years preceding World War I. Unlike such other highly regarded artists of that period as Picasso, Matisse, and Kandinsky, he did not sustain the innovations that propelled him into the limelight in his youth into his later work. As a result, his painting seems uneven after 1920 and his most significant work in the 1930s was murals and public commissions, an extension of his wife's early experiments. After his death in 1941 she continued to work prodigiously, designing books, tapestries, and fabrics, as well as interior decors and murals. Her work, as an extension of her husband's theories and early discoveries, helped to establish his reputation as a significant painter of the 20th century.

Further Reading

There are a number of good books written on the work of both Robert and Sonia Delaunay. Gustav Vrieson's Robert Delaunay: light and color (1969) is a standard, as is Robert Delaunay (1975), translated from the French with a text by Bernard Dorival. A more recent monograph, Robert Delaunay, appeared in 1976. There are numerous catalogs of exhibitions in Europe but none in English. Several works on Sonia stand out. One is a catalog Sonia Delaunay: rhythms and colors (1972) with text by Jacques Remase, and a second is Sonia Delaunay (1975) by Arthur Cohen. □

Delaunay, Robert (1885–1941). French painter, born in Paris into an aristocratic family. In 1902–4 he was apprenticed to a firm that produced theatre sets, then took up painting (in which he was essentially self-taught), first exhibiting his work in public (at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne) in 1904. Initially he painted in an Impressionist style, but in 1906 he began the experiments with the abstract qualities of colour that were to provide the central theme of his career. His starting-point was the Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat, but instead of using Seurat's pointillist technique he investigated the interaction of large areas of contrasting colours. He was particularly interested in the interconnections between colour and movement. By 1910 he was making an individual contribution to Cubism, combining its fragmented forms with a personal use of vibrant colour and applying them to the dynamism of city life rather than to the standard Cubist repertoire of still-life and so on. In particular he did a memorable series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower, in which the huge monument seems to be unleashing powerful bursts of energy (The Eiffel Tower, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1910). He had his first one-man show in February 1912 at the Galerie Barbazanges, Paris, and by the end of the year he was painting completely abstract pictures (the first French artist to do so). Apollinaire gave the name Orphism to Delaunay's work of this period because of its analogies with the abstract art of music.

In 1911 Kandinsky had invited Delaunay to take part in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition, and in 1913 he had a one-man show at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin. His work was a major influence on German Expressionists such as Klee, Macke, and Marc, and it also powerfully affected the Futurists in Italy and the American Synchromists. Delaunay was notoriously competitive and fully aware of the importance of his work; at about this time he drew up a list of all the artists, however minor, he thought he had influenced. However, the period when he was a key figure in modern art was fairly brief; he lived in Spain and Portugal during the First World War and after his return to Paris in 1920 his work lost its inspirational quality and became rather repetitive. His home became a meeting-place for Dada artists, but Delaunay's own paintings continued to be related to colour theories. His last major works (done in collaboration with his wife Sonia Delaunay-Terk) were large murals for pavilions in the Paris World Fair of 1937 (his training as a scene painter gave him a lifelong taste for working on a big scale). He died following an operation for cancer.

Delaunay, Robert (b Paris, 12 Apr. 1885; d Montpellier, 25 Oct. 1941). French painter. Initially he painted in an Impressionist style, but in 1906 he began the experiments with the abstract qualities of colour that were to provide the central theme of his career. His starting point was Neo-Impressionism, but instead of using Seurat's pointillist technique he investigated the interaction of large areas of contrasting colours. He was particularly interested in the interconnections between colour and movement. By 1910 he was making an individual contribution to Cubism, combining its fragmented forms with vibrant colours (rather than the muted browns and greys typical of Braque and Picasso at this time) and depicting the dynamism of city life rather than the standard Cubist repertoire of still-life and so on. In particular he did a memorable series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower, in which the huge monument seems to be unleashing powerful bursts of energy (Eiffel Tower, 1910, Guggenheim Mus., New York). By 1912 he was painting completely abstract pictures (the first French artist to do so). Apollinaire gave the name Orphism to Delaunay's work of this period because of its analogies with the abstract art of music. In 1913 he had a one-man show at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin, and his work was a major influence on German Expressionists such as Klee, Macke, and Marc; it also powerfully affected the Futurists in Italy and the American Synchromists. Delaunay was notoriously competitive and fully aware of the importance of his work; at about this time he drew up a list of all the artists, no matter how minor, he thought he had influenced. However, the period when he was a key figure in modern art was fairly brief; he lived in Spain and Portugal during the First World War and after his return to Paris in 1920 his work lost its inspirational quality and became rather repetitive. His home became a meeting place for Dada artists, but Delaunay's own paintings continued to be related to colour theories. His last major works were two large murals (destroyed) for pavilions in the Paris World Fair of 1937.

Delaunay, Robert (1885–1941). French painter. Initially he painted in an Impressionist style, but in 1906 he began the experiments with the abstract qualities of colour that were to provide the central theme of his career. His starting point was Neo-Impressionism, but instead of using Seurat's pointillist technique he investigated the interaction of large areas of contrasting colours. He was particularly interested in the interconnections between colour and movement. By 1910 he was making an individual contribution to Cubism, combining its fragmented forms with vibrant colours (rather than the muted browns and greys typical of Braque and Picasso at this time) and depicting the dynamism of city life rather than the standard Cubist repertoire of still life and so on. In particular he did a memorable series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower, in which the huge monument seems to be unleashing powerful bursts of energy (Eiffel Tower, 1910, Guggenheim Mus., New York). By 1912 he was painting completely abstract pictures (the first French artist to do so). Apollinaire gave the name Orphism to Delaunay's work of this period because of its analogies with the abstract art of music. In 1913 he had a one-man show at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin, and his work was a major influence on German Expressionists such as Klee, Macke, and Marc; it also powerfully affected the Futurists in Italy and the American Synchromists. Delaunay was notoriously competitive and fully aware of the importance of his work; at about this time he drew up a list of all the artists, no matter how minor, he thought he had influenced. However, the period when he was a key figure in modern art was fairly brief; he lived in Spain and Portugal during the First World War and after his return to Paris in 1920 his work lost its inspirational quality and became rather repetitive. His home became a meeting place for Dada artists, but Delaunay's own paintings continued to be related to colour theories. His last major works were two large murals (destroyed) for pavilions in the Paris World Fair of 1937.

Robert Delaunay , 1885–1941, French painter; husband of Sonia Delaunay-Terk. By 1909, Delaunay had progressed from a neoimpressionist phase to cubism, applying cubist principles to the exploration of color. He immediately enlarged cubist themes to include the architecture of cities (e.g., La Ville de Paris, 1912; Musée d'Art moderne, Paris). He became a major figure in the movement Apollinaire termed orphism . This amalgam of fauve color, futurist dynamism, and analytical cubism sought to emulate the rhythms but not the appearance of nature. Delaunay is most famous for his series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower; one of them is in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City.

Bibliography: See M. Hoog, Delauney (1977).

Delaunay, Robert (1885–1941) French painter, co-founder (with his wife Sonia Delaunay-Terk) of orphism. Delaunay was a major influence on der Blaue Reiter. Many of his works are abstract cityscapes, principally of his native Paris. The Eiffel Tower series is his most famous.