Robert Delaunay began Champs de Mars: The Red Tower in 1911 and reworked it before 1923. The oil on canvas belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago. It is one of his paintings of the Eiffel Tower, a structure whose great scale and exposed framework offered a compelling subject for experiments with modern urban vision.
The tower rises in broken red sections between dark buildings. Smaller rooftops cluster below, while bright clouds and pale openings interrupt the iron structure. Different angles seem to coexist, so the viewer appears to look both upward and downward. The central red shape remains recognizable even as its parts tilt, overlap, and separate.
The museum records that the painting was exhibited in 1912 in an unfinished state and had reached its present appearance by 1923. Its unusual dating therefore reflects actual revision. In the finished arrangement, architecture supplies a framework for rhythmic fragmentation, and the contrast between solid buildings and mobile-looking light gives the city an unstable, energetic character.
Crawford From the Bridge 1942
