The Tower and the Wheel

1910

Marries Sonia Terk; the founding of Orphism

In 1910 Delaunay married Sonia Terk; together with a few others they founded the Orphism art movement, and the couple settled in a studio apartment in Paris.

1911

Joins the “Blue Rider” at Kandinsky’s invitation

In 1911, at the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, Delaunay joined the Munich-based Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) group, took part in its first exhibition and sold four works; he was also successful in Germany, Switzerland and Russia.

1912

The move from Cubism to Orphism

From 1912, together with his wife Sonia Terk-Delaunay, Delaunay moved from Cubism to a distinctive manner of abstract painting that Guillaume Apollinaire named Orphism. Unlike Kandinsky and Mondrian, he rejected idealist metaphysics and saw the main task of abstraction as the study of the dynamic qualities of colour.

1912

Break with the Cubists: “the heretic of Cubism”

1912 was a turning point for Delaunay: his paintings, like prisms compared with the Cubism of his fellow artists, provoked great arguments with comrades who banned colour from their palette, and he called himself “the heretic of Cubism”. The first published suggestion that he had broken with the Cubists appeared in James Burkley’s review of the Salon des Indépendants in L’Assiette au Beurre of 23 March 1912.

February 1912

The second Blue Rider exhibition and the Knave of Diamonds

In February 1912 Delaunay exhibited in the second Blaue Reiter exhibition in Munich and in the Knave of Diamonds exhibition in Moscow.

closed 13 March 1912

First major Paris exhibition, Galerie Barbazanges

His first major exhibition in Paris closed on 13 March 1912 after two weeks at the Galerie Barbazanges: organised by the mathematician and actuary Maurice Princet, it showed 46 works, from the Divisionist period of 1906–07 to the Proto-Cubist and Cubist Eiffel Tower paintings of 1909–12. Apollinaire praised the exhibition and saw in Delaunay an artist with a monumental vision of the world.