Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay
Simultaneous Windows on the City, 1912, by Robert Delaunay, Hamburger Kunsthalle
Born	12 April 1885 Paris, France
Died	25 October 1941(1941-10-25) (aged 56) Montpellier, France
Nationality	French
Field	Painting
Movement	Orphism, Cubism, Expressionism
Influenced by	Pont-Aven School
Influenced	Sonia Delaunay

Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee. His key influence related to bold use of colour, and a clear love of experimentation of both depth and tone.

Biography

Early life

Robert Delaunay was born in Paris, the son of George Delaunay and countess Berthe Félicie de Rose. While he was a child, Delaunay's parents divorced, and he was raised by his mother's sister Marie and her husband Charles Damour, in La Ronchère near Bourges. When he failed his final exam and said he wanted to become a painter, his uncle in 1902 sent him to Ronsin's atelier for decorative arts in Belleville. Aged 19 he left Ronsin to focus entirely on painting and contributed six works to the Salon des Indépendants in 1904. He traveled to Brittany where he was influenced by the group of Pont-Aven and in 1906 contributed works he painted in Brittany to the 22nd Salon des Indépendants, where he met Henri Rousseau.

Towards abstraction (1908-1913)

Champs de Mars. La Tour rouge. 1911. Art Institute of Chicago.

Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon, oil on canvas painting by Robert Delaunay, 1912-13, Museum of Modern Art, (New York City)

In 1908, after a term in the military working as a regimental librarian, he met Sonia Terk, who he later married, though at the time she was married to a German art dealer who she would soon divorce. In 1909, Delaunay began to paint a series of studies of the city of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. The following year, he married Terk, and the couple settled in a studio apartment in Paris, where their son Charles was born in January 1911. At the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, Delaunay joined The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), a Munich-based group of abstract artists, in 1911, and his art took a turn for the abstract^{[citation needed]} Delaunay was also successful in Germany, Switzerland, and Russia. He participated in the first Blanc Reiter exhibition in Munich and sold four works. Delaunay’s paintings encouraged an enthusiastic response with Blaue Reiter. The Blaue Reiter connections led to Erwin Ritter von Busse’s article “Robert Delaunay’s Methods of Compositions” 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 Valet de Carrean in Moscow.

“This happened in 1912. Cultism 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”. --Robert Delaunay, "First Notebook," 1939

1912 was a turning point for Delaunay. On March 13 his first major exhibition in Pairs closed after two weeks at the Galerie Barbazanges. The exhibition showed forty-six works from his early Impressionist works to his Cubist Eiffel Tower painting from 1909-1911. Art Critic Guillaume Apollinaire praised those works of the exhibition and proclaimed Delaunay as “an artist who has a monumental vision of the world.”

With Apollinaire, Delaunay traveled to Berlin in January 1913 for an exhibition of his work at Galerie Der Sturm. On their way back to Paris, the two stayed with August Macke in Bonn, where Macke introduced them to Max Ernst. When his painting La ville de Paris was rejected by the Armory Show as being too big he instructed Samuel Halpert to remove all his works from the show.

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. 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. First declared a deserter, Robert was declared unfit for military duty at the French consulate in Vigo on June 13, 1916.

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 Sergei 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.

Return to Paris and later life (1921-1941)

After the war, in 1921, they returned to Paris. Delaunay continued to work in a mostly abstract style. During the 1937 World Fair in Paris, Delaunay participated in the design of the railway and air travel pavilions. When World War II erupted, the Delaunays moved to the Auvergne, in an effort to avoid the invading German forces. Suffering from cancer, Delaunay was unable to endure being moved around, and his health deteriorated. He died from cancer on 25 October 1941 in Montpellier at the age of 56. His body was reburied in 1952 in Gambais.

Museum collections

Robert Delaunay's works can be found in museums around the world:

Europe

The Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, 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.

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 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Guggenheim Museum (New York City), the Honolulu Academy of Arts, 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, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Rest of the world

The National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Japan).

Sources

• Baron, Stanley; Damase, Jacques (1995). Sonia Delaunay: The Life of an Artist. Harry N. Abrahams. ISBN 0-8109-3222-9. 
• Düchting, Hajo (1995). Delaunay. Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9191-6. 
• Robert Delaunay - Sonia Delaunay: Das Centre Pompidou zu Gast in Hamburg. Hamburger Kunsthalle. 1999. ISBN 3770152166. 
• {{ cite book |first=Gordon |last=Hughes |title=Envisioning Abstraction: The Simultaneity Of Robert Delaunay's First Disk |year=2007

External links

• Quotations related to Robert Delaunay at Wikiquote
• Robert Delaunay at the Internet Movie Database