The Eiffel Tower and Curtain

Robert Delaunay

1910 · Lithograph crayon on brown paper · Modern and Contemporary Art

Robert Delaunay was fascinated by the Eiffel Tower, which was erected in 1889 to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution. For the next forty years (until the construction of New York’s Chrysler Building), the Eiffel Tower remained the tallest structure in the world and was visible throughout the French capital. Between 1909–12 and again from 1920–30, Delaunay represented the Eiffel Tower from all vantage points. His early Cubist depictions of the tower often show it flanked by more traditional buildings, but here, in a drawing made the year that Delaunay married the artist Sonia Terk, he shows the tower from a domestic interior, with pulled-back curtains on either side.

Artist

Robert Delaunay

Date

1910

Medium

Lithograph crayon on brown paper

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Gift of Leonard A. Lauder, 2016