+ Expand

Description: H‚lice signed and dated 'r. delaunay 1923' (lower left); dated again '1923' (lower right) gouache, watercolour and pencil on card 221/2 x 181/8in. (57.3 x 46cm.) Executed in 1923 PROVENANCE Rose Fried Gallery, (The Pinacotheca), New York. William Benenson, New York, circa 1950. Anon. sale, Christie's New York, 6 November 1991, Lot 144 (illustrated on the cover). Acquired at the above sale by the previous owner. LITERATURE G. Habasque, Robert Delaunay: du Cubisme … l'Art Abstrait, Paris, 1957, p. 283, no. 202. NOTES In this work the artist recalls his early and deeply original concepts on the combination of light, colour and movement. More specifically he is referring to the image of the airplane propeller, which he had first used in his Hommage … Bl‚riot, painted in 1913-1914 (Mus‚e d'Art Moderne de la villed de Paris). Like the Italian Futurists, Delaunay was fascinated by technology in modern life and Bl‚riot's achievement of crossing the English Channel in 1909 made a deep impression on him. In his homage to the French airman and the present work Delaunay creates the effect of the distortion of light and the colour generated by the very fast movement of the propeller, which has been reduced to a multi-coloured curving form.