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Your galleryPolitical Drama
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Start at the small center of the rings and move outward, watching each ring change color where it crosses into a new quarter.
Delaunay painted this picture in 1914, a year after his first paintings of circular forms, or discs. He took the story from a newspaper picture of a real crime: the wife of the French finance minister shooting Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro. She steps in on the right in a feathered hat, and he tips backward on the left. Her brown dress or coat is a scrap of real paper glued onto the cardboard.
oil and collage on cardboard · overall: 88.7 x 67.3 cm · National Gallery of Art · Cubism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Political Drama
- Artist
- Robert Delaunay French, 1885 - 1941
- Date
- 1914
- Medium
- oil and collage on cardboard
- Dimensions
- overall: 88.7 x 67.3 cm (34 15/16 x 26 1/2 in.) framed: 103.5 x 83.8 x 5 cm (40 3/4 x 33 x 1 15/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of the Joseph H. Hazen Foundation, Inc.
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- National Gallery of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.