Political Drama

Political Drama transforms a sensational news event of early 1914 into a vortex of Orphist color. Delaunay based the work on a newspaper illustration of the moment Henriette Caillaux, wife of French finance minister Joseph Caillaux, shot and killed Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro, on 16 March 1914. Two collaged figures — Mme Caillaux stepping forward and Calmette falling backward — face each other across concentric rings of opposing color that radiate like a target from the burst of the gunshot. The circular forms grow out of Delaunay's abstract Circular Forms series of 1913, here turned into a sign of violence and modern media spectacle. The work is painted in oil with collage on cardboard and is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.