The ''Eiffel Tower'' series of

Robert Delaunay Robert Delaunay (; 12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist of the School of Paris movement; who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism (art), Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and g ...

(1885–1941) is a cycle of paintings and drawings of the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889. Locally nicknamed "''La dame de fe ...

. The Eiffel Tower was built by Gustave Eiffel. The series was painted in an emerging Orphist style, an art movement co-founded by Robert and

Sonia Delaunay Sonia Delaunay (; 14 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist born to Jewish parents, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine, and was formally trained in Russia and Germany, be ...

and

František Kupka František Kupka (23 September 1871 – 24 June 1957), also known as ''Frank Kupka'' or ''François Kupka,'' was a Czech painter and graphic artist A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, eit ...

that added bright colors and increased abstraction to

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

. The ''Eiffel Tower'' series sits chronologically and stylistically between the artist's '' Saint-Séverin'' series and ''Windows'' series.

Eiffel Tower as symbol

Course of style over series

List of works

Legacy

Delaunay's Eiffel Tower series is evoked in

architectural painting Architectural painting (also Architecture painting) is a form of Genre art, genre painting where the predominant focus lies on architecture, including both outdoor and interior views. While architecture was present in many of the earliest painting ...

s of other iconic buildings by his contemporary, the New York artist

John Marin John Marin (December 23, 1870 – October 2, 1953) was an early American modernist visual artist. He is known for his abstract landscape paintings and watercolors. Early life and education Marin was born on December 23, 1870, in Rutherford, N ...

, in his ''Woolworth Building, No. 31'' of 1912, and later by the Ontario artist Greg Curnoe's ''

CN Tower The CN Tower () is a communications and observation tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Completed in 1976, it is located in downtown Toronto, built on the former Railway Lands. Its name "CN" referred to Canadian National, the railway co ...

'' series of the 1970s and 1980s. The 1913 artist's book '' La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France'', a collaborative work between

and the poet

Blaise Cendrars Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars (), was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European ...

, forms an epic narrative of a Trans-Siberian Railway journey that concludes in Paris at a Simultanist Eiffel Tower. They had announced a plan to sell 150 copies of the book, which would equal in height the Tower itself. The Russian film director

Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is no ...

's appreciation of Delaunay's work informed his Soviet montage theory, as he imagined developing cinematically "a dynamic fusion of a series, moving past the spectator, of those hundred views of the Eiffel Tower" rather than a "summation within a single canvas". Cendrars's 1924 essay on Robert Delaunay describes his feminization of the Tower, and Sonia Delaunay described the Eiffel Tower as her husband's "Eve future" A 1911 painting from the series is featured in the 1980 BBC series ''

100 Great Paintings ''100 Great Paintings'' is a British television series broadcast in 1980 on BBC Two, devised by Edwin Mullins.http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/series/11652 13 January 2007 He chose 20 thematic groups, such as war, the Adoration, the language of col ...

''.

References

{{Robert Delaunay Painting series 1910s paintings Architecture paintings Eiffel Tower Orphism (art) Paintings of Paris Paintings by Robert Delaunay Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago Paintings in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)