Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) was one of the first modern artists to take the final step into abstraction, directed by the pure power of colour and by the ideas coming from theories of perception. The colour lyricism of his works increased from 1912 to 1914 to create colourist fireworks. Delaunay’s oeuvre also deals with the fascination, typical of the time, for the accelerated perception of the city and the technical advances that accompanied this. As a leading light of the avant-garde in Paris, Delaunay created a new artistic language to express these ideas. Beginning with the large-format major work “Hommage à Blériot“ (1914), this catalogue investigates this decisive phase in the artist’s work, illustrates his collaboration with Sonia Delaunay-Terk and describes the restoration of his major work.