L'Équipe de Cardiff

Robert Delaunay, along with his wife Sonia, co-founded Orphism or Orphic Cubism. This style was an offshoot of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colors. Delaunay believed that painting is purely visual art that depends on intellectual elements, and perception is in the impact of colored light on the eye. This work, translated as "The Cardiff Team," was inspired by a newspaper photograph of a Cardiff-Paris rugby match, which showed players jumping for the ball. Delaunay added Paris's famous Ferris wheel and an 'Astra' billboard, which advertises an aircraft construction company. The Eiffel Tower features in many of Delaunay's paintings, as the artist regarded it as the archetypal symbol of modernity. It is here seen emerging above the fragment of his name.