Delaunay

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A French painter of the early twentieth century known for vivid, colourful abstract works in the Orphism movement ; a computational geometry technique that connects scattered points into triangles while avoiding skinny ones
2. Refers to a French artist who helped develop Orphist abstraction through brilliant circular color forms ; a mathematical method that divides a set of points into triangles so the smallest angles are as large as possible
3. The name of a French abstract painter linked to Orphism and bold color experiments ; a geometric triangulation scheme that builds triangles from points so that no circle through three of them contains another point

Etymology: Robert Delaunay, the French painter, shares his name with a common French surname that most likely comes from a place name. The surname probably derives from "aulnay," an Old French word for a grove of alder trees, so an early bearer of the name was probably someone who lived by or came from such a spot. Alders grow in damp ground, which suggests a wet, willow-and-alder landscape behind the name. Robert Delaunay was a leading figure in Orphism, an abstract style that used bold colour and overlapping rhythmic forms rather than recognisable subjects. He is best remembered for his many paintings of the Eiffel Tower, which broke the tower into shards of colour. His wife, Sonia Delaunay, was also an abstract artist, and the two worked closely together on their shared ideas about colour.