Delaunay, Robert (rōbĕr` dəlōnā`), 1885–1941, French painter; husband of Sonia Delaunay-Terk. By 1909, Delaunay had progressed from a neoimpressionist phase to cubism, applying cubist principles to the exploration of color. He immediately enlarged cubist themes to include the architecture of cities (e.g., La Ville de Paris, 1912; Musée d'Art moderne, Paris). He became a major figure in the movement Apollinaire termed orphism orphism, a short-lived movement in art founded in 1912 by Robert Delaunay , Frank Kupka , the Duchamp brothers, and Roger de la Fresnaye. Apollinaire coined the term orphism
..... Click the link for more information. . This amalgam of fauve color, futurist dynamism, and analytical cubism sought to emulate the rhythms but not the appearance of nature. Delaunay is most famous for his series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower; one of them is in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City.

Bibliography

See M. Hoog, Delauney (1977).

Delaunay, Robert

Eiffel Tower, an oil painting on canvas by Robert Delaunay from …

(credit: Deposited by Emanuel Hoffmann-Foundation in Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; photograph, Hans Hinz)

(born April 12, 1885, Paris, Fr.—died Oct. 25, 1941, Montpellier) French painter. He spent his early career as a part-time designer of stage scenery and came under the influence of Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism. In 1909–11 his colour experiments culminated in a series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower, which combined fragmented Cubist forms with dynamic movement and vibrant colour. The introduction of bright colour to Cubism—a style that came to be known as Orphism—distinguished his work from that of the more orthodox Cubist painters and influenced the artists of Der Blaue Reiter. With his wife, the Ukrainian-born painter and textile designer Sonia Terk Delaunay (1885–1979), he painted abstract mural decorations for the 1937 Paris Exposition.