Robert Delaunay (born April 12, 1885, Paris—died Oct. 25, 1941, Montpellier, Fr.) was a French painter who first introduced vibrant colour into Cubism and thereby originated the trend in Cubist painting known as Orphism (q.v.). He was one of the earliest completely nonrepresentational painters, and his work affected the development of abstract art based on the compositional tensions created by juxtaposed planes of colour.
Delaunay was at first a theatre designer and painted only part-time. But he soon came under the influence of the Neo-Impressionists’ use of colour. By 1910 he had made his own contribution to Cubism in two series of paintings, cathedrals and the “Eiffel Tower,” which combined fragmented Cubist form with dynamic movement and vibrant colour. This new and individual use of pictorial rhythms and colour harmonies had an immediate appeal to the senses and, combined with poetic subject matter, distinguished him from the more orthodox Cubist painters. His Orphic style, adopted also by his wife, the painter Sonia Terk Delaunay (1885–1979), had an immediate influence on the work of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a Munich-based group of Expressionist painters.
Two years later he found his way toward completely nonobjective painting when he made his “Colour Disks” and “Windows” series of paintings. Together with his wife, Delaunay worked on large and impressive abstract mural decorations for the Paris Exposition of 1937. Delaunay continued to paint works that restated his Orphic theories.