Robert Delaunay’s Red Tower

Students view and create diamante poems

Oil on canvas 63 1/4 x 50 5/8 in. (160.7 x cm) Signed and dated, l.r.: "r.d. 1911" Inscribed on verso: "Champs de Mars / LA Tour rouge / 1911 / r. delaunay (epoque destructive)" Joseph Winterbotham Collection, Champs de Mars. La Tour rouge Art Institute of ChicagoArt Institute of Chicago.

Robert Delaunay French painter born April 12, 1885, Paris died Oct. 25, 1941, Montpellier, Fr ROBERT DELAUNAY'S YOUTH Robert Delaunay was born April 12, 1885 in Paris (France) into a prominent French aristocratic family. When Robert was 4 years old, his parents divorced and he was subsequently raised by an aunt and uncle. Robert wasn't highly interested in school, so in 1903 he signed up for an apprenticeship in a studio for theater sets in Belleville.

Robert Delaunay painted things that were new and exciting about the world in which he lived. The Eiffel Tower was erected in Paris in 1889 for the World’s Fair, and was the tallest building in the world at that time. The Wright brothers had successfully flown the first biplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903, only ten years before Delaunay’s painting. American engineer George Ferris invented this popular carnival ride in 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It was intended to show that American engineering could rival that of the French-designed and built Eiffel Tower. In 1906, a permanent radio station was installed in the Tower The first Ferris wheel had thirty-six cars made of wood, and could hold up to sixty people. was 264’ high (almost as tall as a football field is long)!

Sun, Tower, Airplane, 1913 Oil on canvas, 52 x 51 5/8"

Louis Blériot (1 July 1872 – 2 August 1936) was a French aviator, inventor and engineerFrenchaviatorinventorengineer The Blériot XI, on which Blériot crossed the Channel in Musée des Arts et Métiers, ParisMusée des Arts et Métiers Robert Delaunay ( ) Homage to Bleriot, /2 x 50 1/2 inches Oil on canvas

Delaunay’s Style of Painting is called -orphic cubism The main idea about his orphism was that not the object defined the picture, but movement, light, and rhythm. Dates: Key Artists: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque Influences: Impressionists; Post Impressionists - Paul Cézanne Cubism was the first 'abstract' art style which began in the early 1900s when artists such as Georges Braque (French) and Pablo Picasso (Spanish) began painting in such a way that was far removed from traditional art styles. The Cubists tried to create a new way of seeing things in art. Many of their subjects, be they people or landscapes, were represented as combinations of basic geometric shapes - sometimes showing multiple viewpoints of a particular image. This approach was related more to the way we see images in our 'minds-eye' rather than in real life, that is if we close our eyes and try to see an image, perhaps of a friend or a family member, it is often hard to visualize the 'whole' image - we usually see parts or fractured pieces. Cubist pictures are therefore often described as looking like pieces of fractured glass.

Robert Delaunay The Cardiff Team, 1913 Oil on canvas The Three Windows, the Tower and the Wheel, 1912 Does Delaunay continue orphic cubistic style in these artworks? How does he apply the color? How does he apply the shapes? How is the viewpoint different than a realist painter’s? What objects does he repeat as a theme about his view of new technologies? Do the colors he chose give us a sense of how he felt about them?

Rainbow, 1913 Oil on canvas 34 9/16 x 39 5/16 in. (87.8 x 99.9 cm) What makes this picture the same or different from the other works we’ve seen of Delaunay’s?

ROBERT DELAUNAY'S LAST YEARS After the war, in 1921, Robert and his artist wife Sonja returned to Paris. Delaunay continued to work in a mostly abstract style. During the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, Delaunay participated in the design of the railway and air travel pavilions. When World War II erupted, the Delaunays moved to the Auvergne, in an effort to avoid the invading German forces. Suffering from cancer, Delaunay was unable to stand being moved around, and his health deteriorated. He died October 25, 1941 in Montpellier

Assessment: Did student incorporate a variety of drawing/collage materials? Present a central theme of Today’s technology? Create a feeling/mood that conveys motion or emergence through color and placement of elements? Did the student emulate modernist compositional elements of Robert Delaunay’s work in their collages?