Visions of Paris: Robert Delaunay’s Series

Published to accompany an exhibition which moved from the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin to the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in February 1998, this is a study of a series of paintings and drawings of Paris between 1909 and 1914 which established Robert Delaunay as a major artist. Delaunay developed a new aesthetic of abstraction in his pursuit of “pure painting” by synthesizing the Impressionist tradition of series painting and the contemporary language of Cubism. His paintings of the church of Saint-Severin, the Eiffel Tower, and window views of Paris, celebrate the rhythms and locales of an urban milieu. The book includes a selection of writings by the artist as well as poems (by Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Louis Aragon and Vincente Huidobro) that were inspired by Delaunay’s art.