Robert Delaunay Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

Light in nature creates movement in color. The movement is provided by the relationships of uneven measures, of colors contrasts among themselves and constitutes Reality [In his quote Delaunay is referring to his series 'Window'-paintings', which he had started in 1912].

Robert Delaunay
The need for a new subject has inspired the poets, launching them onto a fresh path and bringing to their attention to poetry of la Tour [the Eiffel tower in Paris], which communicates mysteriously with the whole world. Rays of light, waves of symphonic sounds. Factories, bridges, iron structures, airships, the numberless gyrations of aeroplanes, windows seen by crowd simultaneously.

Robert Delaunay
This happened in 1912. Cubism was in full force. I made paintings that seemed like prisms compared to the Cubism my fellow artists were producing. I was the heretic of Cubism. I had great arguments with my comrades who banned color from their palette, depriving it of all elemental mobility. I was accused of returning to Impressionism, of making decorative paintings, etc... I felt I had almost reached my goal.

Robert Delaunay
Remark to Sonia Delaunay, his wife and female artist:
I can see the black spots of the sun.

Robert Delaunay
As long as art cannot get free from the object, it will continue to be a description.

Robert Delaunay
The woman of 'The City of Paris', [the painting, Delaunay painted in 1910 – 1912] sums up the [his] Cubist period....[his painting from 1913] 'The Cardiff team' is more significant in the expression of colour, less shattered. The yellow poster in the complete picture contrasts with the blues, greens and orange.

Robert Delaunay
On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning of Impressionism.

Robert Delaunay
'Simultaneousness' is a technique. Simultaneous contrast is the most up-to-date honey of this technique in this field. Simultaneous contrast is visible depth – Reality, Form, construction, representation. Depth is the new inspiration. We live in depth, we travel in depth. I'm in it. The senses are in it. And the mind is too.

Robert Delaunay
What they are saying is okay [about the Futurist artists like Severini, Carra and Russolo, who debated in Paris intensively with the Cubist artists].

Robert Delaunay
The word "art" means harmony for me. I never speak of mathematics and never bother with the Spirit. My only science is the choice of impressions that the light in the universe furnishes to my consciousness as an artisan which I try, by imposing an Order, and Art, an appropriate representative life, to organize...

Robert Delaunay