Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was a French painter who helped push abstraction forward through his love of color. Born in Paris in 1885, he developed, together with his wife Sonia, a bright, rhythmic style built around circles and arcs of pure, contrasting color. The poet Apollinaire named their approach Orphism, suggesting a painting as musical and pure as poetry.

He painted the Eiffel Tower again and again, breaking it into dynamic, fragmented forms, and later made joyful abstract compositions of spinning color discs. His belief that color alone could create form and movement influenced many other modern artists. Delaunay's vibrant, energetic canvases remain landmarks in the story of abstract art.