Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), French painter, who was a pioneer of abstract art in the early 20th century. For a few years before World War I began in 1914, Delaunay was one of the most influential artists in Paris. His later career was less distinguished.

Delaunay was born in Paris, where between 1902 and 1904 he trained as a theatrical scene painter. He was essentially self-taught as an artist and first publicly exhibited his paintings in 1904. His style at this time was impressionist; he was subsequently influenced by neo-impressionism, and by 1910 he was working in a highly personal cubist idiom. Delaunay adopted the fragmented forms of cubism but generally used bright colors instead of the muted browns and grays typical of the paintings of cubist pioneers Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at this time. Rather than the usual static, intimate cubist subjects—primarily still lifes and human figures—Delaunay depicted scenes of modern city life. His work in this vein includes a series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower. By fragmenting the tower and representing it from different perspectives, Delaunay gives these paintings a dizzying, pulsating energy.

By the end of 1912 Delaunay had become the first French artist to produce completely abstract paintings. They consisted of vibrant arrangements of fragmented color. Art historians recognize his Windows series (1912) as among the earliest examples of totally abstract art, making them an important landmark in modern art. French poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire coined the terms orphism and orphic cubism to describe the style of these abstract works. In invoking the name of Orpheus, a poet and musician in Greek mythology, Apollinaire indicated that Delaunay had introduced a note of lyrical beauty into the austere cubism of Braque and Picasso.

Various artists were grouped with Delaunay as orphists, notably Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia, but the artist who was closest in style to him at this time was Czech-born František Kupka, who had lived in Paris since about 1895. Delaunay’s work was influential not only in France, but also in other countries, particularly Germany. At the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, he exhibited paintings in the first Blaue Reiter show in Munich in 1911, and he had a one-man exhibition in Berlin in 1913.

In 1910 Delaunay married Russian-born artist and designer Sonya Terk. During World War I, the Delaunays lived in Spain and Portugal. After they returned to Paris in 1920, most of the inspiration went out of his work, although he continued to be a well-known figure in the French art world. His love of rhythm and movement led to several series of paintings based on sporting events, such as Sprinters (1924-1926), and culminated in abstract works focusing purely on rhythm, such as the later Rhythms and Eternal Rhythms series.