Who is the artist and what is it expressing?

The Tower, by Robert Delaunay

The cubist artist Robert Delaunay was fascinated by the Eiffel Tower, and during his life he painted the famous French tower time and again, as you can see below:

Robert Delaunay

The Tower

(1911) (inscribed 1910)

Ink and pencil on paper

21 1/4 x 19 1/4" (53.9 x 48.9 cm)

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund

As the world’s tallest monument at the time, the Eiffel Tower was for Delaunay a symbol of both modernity and masculinity, and he depicted it time and again. He was among the first artists to focus on this Parisian landmark as a subject. Rather than represent the Eiffel Tower from one view, Delaunay’s drawing uses rhythmically placed lines and patterns to capture his experience of the tower from multiple perspectives.

The drawing is an example of Delaunay’s engagement with the dynamic architecture of Paris at the turn of the 20th century. The Eiffel Tower was just one of the exciting public projects undertaken during an era that would later be described as the Belle Époque (French for “beautiful era”). In comparison to the horrors of World War I that would follow it, the Belle Époque was a time of peace, invention, and intense art production for France and its neighbors.