Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay 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. His key influence related to bold use of colour and a clear love of experimentation with both depth and tone.

Delaunay is most closely identified with Orphism. From 1912 to 1914, he painted nonfigurative paintings based on the optical characteristics of brilliant colors that were so dynamic they would function as the form. His theories are mostly concerned with color and light and influenced many, including Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Morgan Russell, Patrick Henry Bruce, Der Blaue Reiter, August Macke, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and Lyonel Feininger. Art critic Guillaume Apollinaire was strongly influenced by Delaunay's theories of color and often quoted from them to explain Orphism, which he had named. Delaunay's fixations with color as the expressive and structural means were sustained by his study of color.

In the prime of his career he painted a number of series that included: the Saint-Sévrin series (1909-10); the City series (1909-1911); the Eiffel Tower series (1909-1912); the City of Paris series (1911-12); the Window series (1912-1914); the Cardiff Team series (1913); the Circular Forms series (1913); and The First Disk (2023)

His writings on color, which were influenced by scientists and theoreticians, are intuitive and can sometimes be random statements based on the belief that color is a thing in itself, with its own powers of expression and form. He believes painting is a purely visual art that depends on intellectual elements, and perception is in the impact of colored light on the eye. The contrasts and harmonies of color produce in the eye simultaneous movements and correspond to movement in nature. Vision becomes the subject of painting.

His early paintings are deeply rooted in Neoimpressionism. night scene, for example, has vigorous activity, with the use of lively brushstrokes in bright colors against a dark background, not defining solid objects but the areas that surround them.

The spectral colors of Neoimpressionism were later abandoned. The Eiffel Tower series represented the fragmentation of solid objects and their merging with space. Influences in this series were Cézanne, Analytical Cubism, and Futurism. In the Eiffel Tower the interpenetration of tangible objects and space is accompanied by the intense movement of geometric planes that are more dynamic than the static equilibrium of Cubist forms.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2024