Friday, December 23, 2016

Painting Colors after 1910

Sonia Delaunay
Simultaneous Contrasts
1913
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) and Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) married in  Paris in 1910. They encouraged each other to rely on color in their art. They stayed active during the big mess of World War I by living and working in Spain and Portugal. There they met and began to collaborate with Diaghilev. An exhibition of Sonia Delaunay's work at the Louvre in 1964 was the first retrospective mounted in that palace to honor a living woman.

Robert Delaunay
Woman with a Parasol
1913
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Robert Delaunay
Portuguese Woman
1916
oil & wax on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

These paintings were all made around the time of World War I, even though the viewer will search in vain for miseries or horrors.  It appears that those who formed the Thyssen-Bornmenisza Collection (where this work now dwells) may have made the explicit choice to document European art of the war years produced outside the context of the war.

Theo van Doesburg
Composition II Still Life
1916
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Liubov Popova
Painterly Architectonic (Still Life Instruments)
1915
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

František Kupka
Position of Mobile Graphic Elements I
1912-13
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Francis Picabia
Predicament
1914
watercolor
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Fernand Léger
The Disc
1918
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Wilhelm Trübner
Lake Starnberger
1911
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid


Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Sun Over Pine Forest
1913
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Auguste Macke
Circus
1913
oil on cardboard
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Alexandra Exter
Still Life
1913
collage & oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemimsza, Madrid

Conrad Felixmüller
Portrait of Elfriede Hausmann
ca. 1917
oil on canvas (recto)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Auguste Herbin
Head
1918
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

I am grateful to Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza for the excellent reproductions.