Study for The City 1910

Robert Delaunay made this study for The City with oil on canvas. Looking at the planes of blues and grays that describe the buildings, I can imagine Delaunay working and reworking, layering color over color to find the right balance. I feel a kinship with him, trying to find an angle on a subject. You see how the artist is thinking through the architectural structure by reducing it to its essential forms. The brushstrokes are very visible, like he is working out an idea, open to where it leads. Look at how Delaunay used those thin, watery blues to define the sharp edges of the buildings; it’s almost like the sky is bleeding into the architecture, blurring the boundaries between solid and ethereal. Artists have always looked to each other for inspiration. Delaunay was part of a community of artists who were building on the ideas of cubism and impressionism to forge a new way of seeing the world, through abstraction.