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 Robert Delaunay was a living paradox. In every aspect of his life, Delaunay had to rationalize and mitigate the apparent contradictions between his habits and his mores. He was a man of extreme wealth and extravagant tastes, but yearned to be a simple man in tune with nature. Art provided him a balance between these two extremes. Delaunay chose to express the more harmonic and pure side of his personality through his artwork and indulge his more lavish side while at play. The perplexing nature of his life is manifest in his artwork, which attempts to simplify the complicated. With much informal yet potent training, Delaunay created a personal artistic style that earned him much deserved recognition.
Robert Delaunay was born on April 12, 1885, in Paris to a family of rooted aristocratic lineage. The Delaunays were said to be a cultured, albeit spoiled, family. His father Georges was a modern businessman who daringly invested in electricity at the time of Robert’s birth, while his mother Countess Berthe-Félice de Rose was more selfishly concerned with the arts, travel, and Parisian social life. His parents divorced in 1889 and severed all ties with one another. Consequently, Delaunay hardly knew his father and saw his mother only during periodic home-stays in between her travels. The future artist ended up staying mostly in the care of his mother’s older sister and brother-in-law at their large country estate near Bourges. Delaunay lived a split life -- one of a refined, yet snooty culture with his mother and also one of undisturbed and serene nature with his aunt and uncle. Not surprisingly, he grew to detest the Parisian lifestyle and prefer the calm of the country. On several occasions, Delaunay attempted to bring the two worlds together. One story has it that Delaunay once brought wild birds and their nests to Paris to raise them in the city. Nevertheless, contact with high society permanently changed Delaunay’s tastes. As an adult, Delaunay would favor the good life, choosing the best food, wine, and entertainment Paris had to offer. He was a worldly young man who seemed confident and comfortable on the surface, but was truly unnerved by the obvious contradictions in his divided life.
Delaunay developed a love for the arts at an early age. He rebelled against traditional schooling and paid attention only to classes concerning art and natural history. Delaunay was a lazy student and was expelled from several schools in both Paris and Bourges. At the ripe age of 17, Delaunay convinced his family that he was meant to live his life as an artist. They conceded in spite of their worries of the damage he might do to their social status, as painting was not a very highly esteemed profession for the aristocracy at that time. In 1902, Delaunay became apprentice to the theater scene painter Ronsin in the town of Belleville. This would be Delaunay’s only formal artistic training. Delaunay stayed in Belleville for two years and gained much confidence in his work. Also, Delaunay’s mother became his most avid supporter during this apprenticeship. She supported much of his work, as well as that of his friends.
In 1904, Delaunay’s artwork was exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. He was 19 at the time. The exhibition featured six major works. It was obvious in the subject matter and brushstrokes of these early paintings that the Impressionistic movement had greatly influenced Delaunay’s style. However, over the next few years, his style would change immensely, becoming more futuristic with time. In 1909, Delaunay began his Saint-Séverin series, an in-depth study of formal techniques. Several of these sketches were painted from direct observation and captured the light as it truly fell through the windows and into the cathedral. His more Cubist Eiffel Tower series would soon follow. Delaunay once again exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, showcasing his most important paintings.
In 1910, Delaunay married Sonia Terk, a fellow artist. The two had met through Terk’s first husband Wilhelm Uhde. Uhde was a German art dealer with whom Delaunay visited socially on occasion. Terk was attracted to Delaunay’s whimsical nature and foolishly elaborate life plans. She believed him to be different from the rest of high society, admitting that she was “carried away by the poet in him, the visionary, the fighter.” The tortured artist persona had worked for Delaunay. In 1911, the couple had a son.
In April of 1912, Delaunay began his Windows series. In these pieces Delaunay studied “pure” color, experimenting with the richness of solid color blocks. He was also one of the first artists who played with the relationships and emotions that resulted from the placement of one block of color next to another block of color. Delaunay was greatly impressed by Wassily Kandinsky’s work and strove to produce works that explored color as effectively as this mentor’s. Also at about this time, Delaunay published his manifesto “On Light,” which Kandinsky encouraged Delaunay to write. The beautifully worded essay called art a visual poetry whose success depended on the concept of simultaneity. According to Kandinsky and Delaunay, the act of simultaneity coordinates light so that a harmonic perception of the physical world can be attained. Furthermore, light is the most powerful entity in the world in that it determines what is seen and thus what is detected and known to man. Delaunay acquired much attention in Germany through both his writing and painting. In 1913 the Der Strum gallery in Berlin exhibited a solo show of Delaunay’s work. Delaunay had basically created a new artistic movement, which his peers had termed “Orphism.”
The coming of World War I coincided with great change in the Delaunays’ lives. In 1914, their son became so deathly ill that they decided to relocate to Madrid for him to rest. A year later, the family moved to Portugal for six years and produced little notable artwork. Sonia referred to this stay as a brief family holiday. The couple finally moved back to Paris, and Robert began churning out one painting after another. He had created a truly distinctive style that captured the attention of many Europeans. The Der Strum gallery housed a few shows of both Robert’s and Sonia’s artwork during this period.
Delaunay was fascinated by modernity in spite of his keen appreciation of nature. He saw modern-day inventions as an indication of the shattering of obsolete social conventions and restrictions. Furthermore, these timesaving, effort-reducing, energy-efficient inventions allowed people to have much more freedom in their everyday lives, thus allowing them to spend more time in natural environments. In the 1920s, Delaunay eventually became an active and boisterous advocate of such ideas, incessantly delivering his sermon to anyone and everyone in his presence. His reputation for being an arrogant, loquacious, and oftentimes disrespectful friend therefore persisted, but Sonia merely blamed Robert’s lack of confidence and personal insecurities for this sort of behavior. In any case, Delaunay’s outlook on modernity also affected his painting. Even early on in his career, Delaunay painted Paris and its plethora of technological innovations in a dreamy manner, in works such as City of Paris (1912).
Once again, Delaunay took a break from the art world. He did not produce any great work of art again until around 1930, when his study of abstract forms had been perfected. Delaunay also set out to write a book in the 1930s, but he failed to complete it. For the most part, the Great Depression had weakened the market for luxury goods. According to his wife’s whims, the Delaunays wasted their days away daydreaming and living the simple life. By the end of the 1930s, Robert and his family faced grave financial problems. Robert began to exhibit his work once again to improve their situation. The Paris Exhibition of 1937 allowed the Delaunays to live comfortably once again, and Robert continued to regularly showcase his work all around Paris from time to time thereafter. But in 1938 he became extremely ill, and on October 25, 1941, he died of cancer in Montpellier. His legacy, however, lived on in his wife. Sonia Delaunay gained much respect as an artist herself and also ensured that Robert Delaunay’s artistic legacy would be recognized forever. In 1979, a monumental retrospective of both artists’ work was held in Japan. From then on, major important retrospectives of Delaunay’s work have been housed in museums all over the world.
Robert Delaunay’s artistic techniques were simple and natural, while his life was complex and unnatural. Like most artists, he was constantly in search of a personal voice. Unlike many artists, Delaunay was able to find this personal voice. He created a powerful style all his own that comprehensively explored the power of colors and their relationships to light. But his perseverance and dedication to art seem at times more admirable than his art itself, for he inundated himself in the realm of art and almost transformed it into a science to create precise, well-calculated paintings. Nonetheless, these paintings are beautiful, provocative, and considered essential to any major collection of modern art.
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