Homage to Blériot

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.

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.

1913

Berlin: an exhibition at Galerie Der Sturm, a trip with Apollinaire

In January 1913 Delaunay travelled to Berlin with Guillaume Apollinaire for an exhibition of his work at Galerie Der Sturm.

1914

The war finds them in Spain: they settle in Madrid

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 Sonia and Robert were staying in Fontarabie in Spain; they decided not to return to France and settled in Madrid.