Product Code Database
Robert Delaunay (; 12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist of the School of Paris movement; who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract art. His key influence related to the bold use of colour and a clear love of experimentation with both depth and tone.
His theories about color and light influenced many artists such as Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Morgan Russell, Patrick Henry Bruce, Der Blaue Reiter, August Macke, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Thomas Hart Benton, Lyonel Feininger and dozens more. The poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire was also influenced by Delaunay's theories of color and quoted from them to explain Orphism, which he had named.
Delaunay formed a close friendship at this time with Jean Metzinger, with whom he shared an exhibition at a gallery run by Berthe Weill early in 1907. The two of them were singled out by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1907 as Divisionism who used large, mosaic-like 'cubes' to construct small but highly symbolic compositions.
Robert Herbert writes: "Metzinger's Neo-Impressionist period was somewhat longer than that of his close friend Delaunay... The height of his Neo-Impressionist work was in 1906 and 1907, when he and Delaunay did portraits of each other (Art market, London, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) in prominent rectangles of pigment. (In the sky of Coucher de soleil no. 1, 1906–07, Collection Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, is the solar disk which Delaunay was later to make into a personal emblem)."Robert Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1968 Herbert describes the vibrating image of the sun in Metzinger's painting, and so too of Delaunay's Paysage au disque (1906–07), as "an homage to the decomposition of spectral light that lay at the heart of Neo-Impressionist color theory..." Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Jean Metzinger, Coucher de soleil No. 1
Metzinger, followed closely by Delaunay—the two often painting together in 1906 and 1907—would develop a new sub-style of Neo-Impressionism that had great significance shortly thereafter within the context of their Cubist works. Piet Mondrian developed a similar mosaic-like Divisionist technique circa 1909. The Futurists later (1909–1916) would incorporate the style, under the influence of Gino Severini's Parisian works (from 1907 onward), into their dynamic paintings and sculpture.
In 1908, after a term in the military working as a regimental librarian, he met fellow artist Sonia Terk; at the time she was married to a German art dealer whom she would soon divorce. In 1909, Delaunay began to paint a series of studies of the city of Paris and the Eiffel Tower, the Eiffel Tower series.
The following year, he married Terk, and, together with a few others, they founded the Orphism art movement. The couple settled in a studio apartment in Paris, where their son Charles Delaunay was born in January 1911. The same year, at the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, Delaunay joined The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), a Munich-based group of artists. Delaunay was also successful in Germany, Switzerland, and Russia. He participated in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition in Munich and sold four works. Delaunay's paintings encouraged an enthusiastic response with Blaue Reiter. The Blaue Reiter connections led to the article by Erwin von Busse titled "Robert Delaunay's Methods of Composition", which appeared in the 1912 Blaue Reiter Almanac. Delaunay would go to exhibit in February of that year, in the second Blaue Reiter exhibition in Munich and Knave of Diamonds in Moscow.
"This happened in 1912. Cubism was in full force. I made paintings that seemed like prisms compared to the Cubism my fellow artists were producing. I was the heretic of Cubism. I had great arguments with my comrades who banned color from their palette, depriving it of all elemental mobility. I was accused of returning to Impressionism, of making decorative paintings, etc.… I felt I had almost reached my goal."
1912 was a turning point for Delaunay. On 13 March his first major exhibition in Paris closed after two weeks at the Galerie Barbazanges. The exhibition, organized by the French mathematician and actuary Maurice Princet, showed forty-six works from his early 1906-07 Divisionist period to his Proto-Cubism and Cubist Eiffel Tower paintings from 1909 to 1912. Apollinaire praised those works of the exhibition and proclaimed Delaunay as "an artist who has a monumental vision of the world."
In the 23 March 1912 issue of the satirical magazine L'Assiette au Beurre, the first published suggestion that Delaunay had broken with this group of Cubists appeared, in James Burkley's review of the Salon des Indépendants. Burkley wrote, "The "Cubists", who occupied only a room, have multiplied. Their leaders, Picasso and Braque, have not participated in their grouping, and Delaunay, commonly labeled a Cubist, has wished to isolate himself and declares he has nothing in common with Metzinger or Le Fauconnier." James Burkley, L'Assiette au Beurre, 23 March 1912, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
With Apollinaire, Delaunay traveled to Berlin in January 1913 for an exhibition of his work at Der Sturm. On their way back to Paris, the two stayed with August Macke in Bonn, where Macke introduced them to Max Ernst.Willard Bohn: Apollinaire and the international avant-garde (1997), , p82 When his painting La ville de Paris was rejected by the Armory Show as being too big La ville de Paris measures 234 x 294 cm. he instructed Samuel Halpert to remove all his works from the show.
The Russian Revolution brought an end to the financial support Sonia received from her family in Russia, and a different source of income was needed. In 1917 the Delaunays met Diaghilev in Madrid. Robert designed the stage for his production of Cleopatra (costume design by Sonia Delaunay). Robert Delaunay illustrates Tour Eiffel for Vicente Huidobro.
Paul Poiret refused a business partnership with Sonia in 1920, citing as one of the reasons her marriage to a deserter. The Der Sturm gallery in Berlin showed works by Sonia and Robert from their Portuguese period the same year.Düchting: p91
When World War II erupted, the Delaunays moved to the Auvergne region, in an effort to avoid the invading Nazi Germany forces. Suffering from cancer, Delaunay was unable to endure being moved around, and his health deteriorated. He died of cancer on 25 October 1941 in Montpellier at the age of 56. His body was reburied in 1952 in Gambais.
Spanish and Portuguese years (1914–1920)
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 Sonia and Robert were staying in Fontarabie in Spain. They decided not to return to France and settled in Madrid. In August 1915 they moved to Portugal where they shared a home with Samuel Halpert and Eduardo Viana.Some sources mention an Eduardo Vianna With Viana and their friends Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (whom the Delaunays had already met in Paris) and José de Almada Negreiros they discussed an artistic partnership.Düchting: p51 First declared a deserter, Robert was declared unfit for military duty at the French consulate in Vigo on 23 June 1916.
Return to Paris and later life (1921–1941)
After the war, in 1921, Robert and Sonia Delaunay returned to Paris. Robert Delaunay continued to work in both figurative and abstract themes, with a brief stint into Surrealism. He met André Breton and Tristan Tzara, who introduced him to both and Surrealists. Robert Delaunay, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza During the 1937 World Fair in Paris, Delaunay participated in the design of the railway and air travel pavilions.
Gallery
Museum collections
The main collection of Robert Delaunay's works is in the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris but his work also can be found in museums and public collections around the world such as the following:
Europe
The Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris,
the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris,
the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin,
the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (Spain),
Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland),
the National Galleries of Scotland,
the New Art Gallery (Walsall, England),
Palazzo Cavour (Turin, Italy),
the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice),
National Museum of Serbia,
Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands),
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille (France). Tate (London, England)
United States
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York),
the Art Institute of Chicago,
the Columbus Museum of Art,
the Berkeley Art Museum,
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,
the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,
the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, New York),
the Guggenheim Museum (New York City),
the Honolulu Museum of Art,
the Museum of Modern Art (New York City),
the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.),
the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX),
the San Diego Museum of Art,
the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
and the Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint Louis, MO)
Elsewhere
The National Gallery of Victoria (Australia),
the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Japan).
Publications
(1999). 9783770152162, Hamburger Kunsthalle. ISBN 9783770152162
See also
External links
Categories: 1885 Births, 1941 Deaths, 20th-century French Painters, 20th-century French Male Artists, French Abstract Painters, Painters From Paris, French Cubist Artists, Divisionist Painters, French Male Painters, French Impressionist Painters, Orphism, School Of Paris, Deaths From Cancer In France, World War Ii Refugees
|
|
