Exhibition

The Delaunay Circle

20 Nov 2015 – 22 Feb 2016

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'The Long Holiday’ was the name given by Sonia Delaunay to the period between June 1915 and January 1917, which she spent in Portugal.

About

For Robert and Sonia Delaunay, this was a time of hard work, peace and tranquillity in a global climate otherwise marked by conflict, which eventually reached Portugal when Germany declared war on the country on 9 March 1916.

The Delaunays’ circle of contacts and friends from Paris, among them Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Eduardo Viana, now came to include José Pacheco and the 22-year-old Almada Negreiros. In June 1915 they went to Vila do Conde at the suggestion of Eduardo Viana, and soon moved into No 7 Rua Bento de Freitas. They were joined by Viana, and in August 1915 were visited by the American painter Sam Halpert, an acquaintance from Robert Delaunay’s time in Brittany.

In Portugal, the Delaunays would begin to experiment with encaustic paintings (hot wax mixed with pigment). While Halpert and Viana, and Souza-Cardoso in Manhufe, would also make wax paintings, achieving layers of highly saturated, velvety colours, in the case of the Delaunays this led to pieces bursting with contrasts (Simultanism or Orphism, as it came to be known). Viana went frequently to Manhufe to visit Souza-Cardoso, as well as to Lisbon, his hometown. Souza-Cardoso also visited the Delaunays at least twice in Vila do Conde, although they did not travel to Amarante.

The exhibition focuses on the creative milieu that arose through the presence of these artists, whom war had brought back to their native countries or pushed into exile. Many of the works that they produced in Portugal during these years are presented and related to the collective project that the Delaunays conceived in Portugal, which they called ‘La Corporation Nouvelle’. Souza-Cardoso, Viana and Almada Negreiros collaborated in this ‘New Corporation’. Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire and the Russian painter Daniel Rossiné (or Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné) also signed up (perhaps unbeknownst to the artists themselves). The ‘Expositions Mouvantes’ were planned, touring exhibitions that would travel ‘Nord-Sud-Est-Ouest’ (from North to South, from East to West), and so was the release of various albums that would be sold on a subscription basis and accompany the exhibitions, jointly organised by the artists. As Robert Delaunay writes in the announcement and programme for Album 1, point 3: «This represents an artistic, and practical idea [that was] borne out of the need for mutual support for the arts, which are more than ever in danger, more than ever auniversal reality”. [own emphasis]

A catalogue featuring expert articles that deepen knowledge about the artists will be published in tandem with the exhibition, with a particular focus on the Delaunays’ working relationship with Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and the futurist Italian art dealer Arturo Ciacelli, based on Stockholm, who was behind the only exhibition held as part of the ‘Corporation Nouvelle’, which took place in Stockholm in 1916. The exhibition also looks at Sonia Delaunay’s commission to create a mural that would be made into azulejos for the façade of a building in Valença do Minho; the influence of simultaneist painting on the literary and visual poetry of Almada Negreiros; and the close relationship between the Delaunays and Eduardo Viana.

Ana Vasconcelos

CuratorsToggle

Ana Vasconcelos

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