THE DELAUNAY CIRCLE
The Delaunay Circle comes together in the exaltation of colour and in the creative relationship between different art forms. It never issued a Manifesto, despite its formation following a period of manifestos, nor can it be attached to any specific artistic movement, although the terms "Orphism" and "Simultaneism", both coined in 1912 by Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay respectively (the latter of which developed his theory of simultaneity that same year), are naturally associated with it, It was a circle assembled in Portugal between 1915 and 1917, comprised of artists, places, their projects and creations, and it expanded and retracted as a consequence of the dynamic of its participants. There we find artists who worked intensely in identifiable locales.
Sónia and Robert Delaunay arrived in Lisbon in late May of 1915. Quite possibly, they were attracted to the Portuguese capital by the publication of the first issue of the magazine Orpheu on 24 March, and by the presence of artist friends whom they had met in Paris, including Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Eduardo Viana and José Pacheco. In June, they settled in Vila do Conde following an invitation from Viana. Their house, which they dubbed "La Simultanée", would host Viana and the American artist Samuel Halpert for extended periods of work. Halpert had become a very good friend to Robert Delaunay during their stay in Brittany several years before. Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, who had been staying at his parents' estate in Manhufe, Amarante, since September 1914 on account of the war, also visited them on at least two occasions for short stays. From Lisbon, José de Almada Negreiros kept up an occasional correspondence with Sónia in which he was clearly inspired by her presence in Portugal. The letters that these artists and José Pacheco exchanged with Sónia and Robert Delaunay - unfortunately, the latter's replies were not preserved - were an important source of documentation in researching this exhibition and the texts included in the catalogue(1).
In August 1916, following a brief interval of a few months during which they moved to Vigo in Spain, Sónia and Robert Delaunay returned to Portugal. They stayed in Valença do Minho and Monção until January 1917, when they left Portugal for good and travelled to Spain. In Valença, Sónia Delaunay received a truly extraordinary invitation to paint a mural that would be converted to tile panels for the façade of an orphanage called Asilo Fonseca, which belonged to Santa Casa da Misericórdia (this building still exists and currently houses the Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais). The mural had to follow a traditional theme, an "Homage to the Donor", which in this case, was a local philanthropist by the name of Apolinário da Fonseca. Unfortunately, the work never carne to fruition; what survives is the project and one study that are now being exhibited.
The Delaunays' return to Portugal in August 1916 astonished Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Eduardo Viana, revealing their great appreciation for Portugal. Sonia's departure had been related with an unhappy and absurd episode of 'espionite' [espionage], as she recalled in her memoires'. On 12 April 1916, exactly one month after Portugal entered the First World War, she was the victim of an anonymous tip that accused her of being a German spy, allegedly sending signals encrypted in the orphic circles of her paintings to German submarines along the Portuguese coast (even though "La Simultanée" was dose to the beach and the 'orphic' discs were so luminous and coloured that they could make colours turn, as Sónia would later describe them, this was an unrealistic theory that was nevertheless taken into consideration by the authorities). Sónia was also accused of maintaining suspicious correspondence in German in letters exchanged with her friends and contacts from Der Sturm and Der Blaue Reiter circles with whom the Delaunays had exhibited and collaborated in 1913. Sónia was held for nearly 15 days in Porto and prevented from travelling to Vigo to be reunited with Robert and their son Charles Delaunay, who were already there. Meanwhile, Eduardo Viana was arrested in Vila do Conde and sent to Porto under accusations of complicity and treason, and his papers and works were abused and damaged. Likewise, the Delaunays' maid, Beatriz Moraes, was detained and a piece of luggage was confiscated. Sónia sought Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso's help in Porto, where he worked hard to find a resolution to the process. One that was finally reached in late April of 1916.
Soon after their arrival in Lisbon, the Delaunays began a project involving the Portuguese artists, which they called Corporation Nouvelle [New Corporation]. With this initiative, they planned to organise Expositions Mouvantes Nord-Sud-Est-Ouest [Travelling Exhibitions North-South-East-West] and produce albums that would be purchased by subscription, in which the artists would execute original works in pochoir, accompanied by texts and poems. This fusion of words and painting had achieved wild success with the foldable book La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France [Prose of the Trans--Siberian and of Little jehanne of France] in 1913, which was the result of a collaboration between Sónia Delaunay and the poet Blaise Cendras. Together, with a number of works that Sónia produced in Portugal, as well as fourof Robert Delaunay's works dating from his pre-war Paris period, this book was exhibited (and sold) in Stockholm in what turned out to be Corporation Nouvelle's only exhibition. Opening at Arturo Ciacelli's Nya konstgalleriet on 23 March 1916, the exhibition did not, however, include any of the Portuguese artists, however. Another exhibition was planned for Josep Dalmau's gallery in Barcelona and was of great interest to Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. However, after repeated delays, it never saw the light of day.
In Portugal, Sónia and Robert Delaunay experimented with encaustic paintings, mixing hot wax with pigment. When applied to simultaneist painting, this technique brought more intensity to colours and gave shape to pictorial material, reinforcing colour in the painting's construction. Although Eduardo Viana, Sam Halpert and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso also experimented with painting in hot wax and shared the Delaunays1 avid preference for colour, they did not hew to simultaneist painting in the same way that Sónia and Robert did. What interested them more than anything was their participation in an artistic revival that the Corporation Nouvelle presumably encapsulated and in the joining of forces to present their works internationally.
(1) This correspondence was published by Paulo Ferreira - Correspondance de quatre artistes portugais. Almada-Negreiros, losé Pacheco, Souza-Cardoso, Eduardo Vianna avec Robert et Sónia Delaunay, Paris: Contribution à 1'histoire de l'art moderne portugais (années 1915-1917), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, (1979, 1981), publication supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Publications du Centre Culturel Portugais).
(2) Nous irons jusqu'au soleil. Paris, Editions Robert Laffont, 1978, p.74. 14
Ana Vasconcelos
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