Delaunay's Rationale forPeinture Pure, 1909–15

Abstract

What I would like to do in this paper is to show that, as in the case of the nonobjective painting of Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, there is a transcendental purpose to Delaunay's peinture pure, where transcendental is understood not only in the sense of freedom from the conventional constraint of subject matter, but as the sign of a new understanding of the universe. That is, peinture pure embodies positive as well as negative freedom, the lyrical expression of what Delaunay called the infinite as well as the defeat of familiar form in a renewal of sensibility for pure color.