Robert Delaunay, Autoportrait, 1909, Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm, Center Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art - Center de création industrielle, Paris. Donation Sonia Delaunay and Charles Delaunay, 1964. Photo: © Center Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat.

ZURICH.- From 31 August to 18 November 2018 the Kunsthaus Zürich is staging a major exhibition devoted to the work of Robert Delaunay (1885–1941). Its key themes include Paris, early aviation, sport and colour at the dawn of the modern era. Spanning some 80 paintings and works on paper, it is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Delaunay’s oeuvre to be shown in Switzerland. 

Delaunay was an artistic pioneer who investigated the use of colour in the depiction of movement, technology, sport, and his own position as a central figure within the development of a dynamic, new and modern world. The Kunsthaus will show the full range of his work, from the early ‘divisionist’ and Fauve portraits of 1906 and 1907 to his designs for the Palais des Chemins de Fer and the Palais de l’Air at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair and the last great series of paintings, ‘Rhythms without End’, created in the final years of his life. The presentation will be enriched by the inclusion of photographs and films by prominent contemporaries who were also inspired by the city of Paris, such as Germaine Krull, Man Ray, André Kertész, Ilse Bing and René Le Somptier. 

Robert Delaunay, Saint-Séverin, 1909, Watercolor and Pencil on Paper, 47.8 x 34 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Betty Bartlett McAndrew.

Robert Delaunay, Étude pour "La Ville", 1909-1910, Oil on canvas, 88.3 x 124.5 cm, Tate: Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1958. Photo: © Tate, London, 2018.

Robert Delaunay, Fenêtres ouvertes simultanément (1st partie, 3ème motif), 1912, Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 37.5 cm, Tate: Acquisition 1967. Photo: © Tate, London, 2018

Robert Delaunay, Drame Politique, 1914, Oil and collage on cardboard, 88.7 x 67.3 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Donation Joseph H. Hazen Foundation.

THE EIFFEL TOWER AND THE ADVANCE OF TECHNOLOGY 
A pictorial vocabulary based on colour contrasts, and circles acting as formal elements and cosmic symbols became the hallmarks of Delaunay’s work. The exhibition will include several important examples of his famous series from these years, such as the curved vaults and stained-glass windows of the late-Gothic church of Saint Séverin in the Quartier Latin and images of the quintessentially Parisian landmark and symbol of modernity, the Eiffel Tower; his related images of ‘The City’, where views of the rooftops of Paris, a giant Ferris wheel, aeroplanes and the sun dominate the picture plane; and his ‘Window’ series, in which Delaunay created a new type of painting based entirely on colour contrasts as equivalents to the interaction of light, space and movement. In these works the fabric of the city seems to dissolve into a field of broken hues. Guillaume Apollinaire, the critic and supporter of Delaunay’s work, assigned this optical effect, based on the self-contained relationships, tensions and harmonies of pure colour, to his own concept of Orphism, an approach that brought together colour, light, music and poetry. Delaunay preferred to refer to it as ‘pure painting’, an idea that was perhaps best explored in his celebrated ‘Disc (The First Disc)’ (1913), in which he avoided all apparent references to the visible world, instead offering a concrete representation of prismatic light effects. 

Robert Delaunay, Disque (Le premier disque), 1913, Oil on canvas, diameter 124 cm, Esther Grether Family Collection.

Robert Delaunay, La Tour Eiffel and the Champ-de-Mars, 1922, Oil on canvas, 178.1 x 170.4 cm ,Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981. Photo : Lee Stalsworth.

Robert Delaunay, La Tour Eiffel et l'avion, 1925, Oil on canvas, 155 x 95 cm. Courtesy Gallery Le Minotaure, Paris.

Robert Delaunay, La Tour Eiffel, 1926-1928, Conté pencil on paper, 62.3 x 47.5 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The Hilla Rebay Collection.

André Kertész, Tour Eiffel, 1929, Gelatin silver print, 27.5 x 34.4 cm, Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris. Photo: Musée Carnavalet / Parisienne de Photographie © RMN-Grand Palais - Gestion droit d'auteur.

DYNAMISM ON LAND, WATER AND IN THE AIR 
The disc form recurs in Delaunay’s paintings from 1906 onwards. Between 1913 and 1932 this shape formed the subject of several canvases entitled ‘Sun and Moon’, such as the spectacular example in the Kunsthaus’s own collection. A series of works from 1914 dedicated to the pioneer of aviation, Louis Blériot, also makes extensive use of the circular form. In his quest to depict dynamism, Delaunay embarked on a series of more representational works of modern life, including his famous ‘Runners’ paintings of 1924–25. He had already tackled the sport theme in his earlier ‘Cardiff Team’ images. It is probable that his interest in movement and the races was rekindled by the spectacle of the Olympics, which were held in Paris in 1924. 

Robert Delaunay, Les coureurs, 1924-1925, Oil on canvas, 153 x 203 cm, Private collection.

Robert Delaunay, Olympiad, Paris, 1924, 1923, Gouache on paper, heightened with red chalk, 65 x 50 cm, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

SOCIETY PORTRAITS 
During the 1920s he also painted numerous portraits of his circle in Paris, among them the poets and writers Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara, together with several fashionable socialites who are shown wearing fabrics designed by Sonia Delaunay. In his series ‘Rhythms without End’, Delaunay became close to the world of geometric abstraction that was gathering momentum in Paris in the early 1930s. His work later served as a model for Op Art and also became a leitmotif for artists working in a concrete, constructivist vein. 

Robert Delaunay, Portrait of Madame Heim, 1926, Oil on canvas, 120 x 75 cm, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum / Modern Collection. Photo: José Manuel Costa Alves

LOANS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD 
Major museums and private collections in Europe and America are assisting Simonetta Fraquelli, a freelance curator specializing in early 20th-century Parisian art, by lending some of their Delaunay masterpieces that, for conservation reasons, are rarely permitted to travel. They include the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Robert Delaunay, Triomphe de Paris, 1929, Gouache on cardboard, 73.2 x 95.4 cm, Private collection Switzerland.

Robert Delaunay, Rythme, Joie de vivre, 1930, Oil on canvas, 146 x 130 cm, Private collection.

Robert Delaunay, Air, fer, eau. Étude pour un mural, 1936-1937, Gouache on paper and wood, 47 x 74.5 cm ,Albertina, Vienna. Collection Batliner.