Robert Delaunay Prints

About Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was born in Paris in 1885 and was raised largely by an aunt and uncle after his parents separated. He trained as a painter of theatre sets in Belleville before turning to easel painting around 1905, working through Neo-Impressionism and the example of Cézanne. Between 1909 and 1912 he painted the church of Saint-Séverin, the Eiffel Tower and the city of Paris in shattered, shifting views that made him one of the most original painters at the edge of Cubism. In 1910 he married the Ukrainian-born artist Sonia Terk, his partner in all his later work. From 1912, in the Windows and then the Circular Forms, he built pictures from contrasts of pure colour alone, drawing on the chemist Chevreul's theory of simultaneous contrast; the poet Guillaume Apollinaire named the result Orphism. Delaunay showed with the Blue Rider in Munich in 1911, and his colour deeply affected Marc, Macke and Klee. The couple spent the war years in Spain and Portugal, returned to Paris in 1921, and in the 1930s Robert turned to large mural decorations, including work for the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. He died of cancer in Montpellier in 1941. His spinning discs and tilting towers carry the optimism of a city discovering flight and electric light, and they fill a wall with movement.