Au Vélodrome

Cycles J.B. Louvet, Poster Tour de France, 1912, Collection Ivan Bonduelle

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec publicity poster from circa 1890s, Constant Huret riding with a Simpson chain behind the Gladiator tandem pacer at the Velodrome de la Seine

Jean Metzinger, Au Vélodrome, 1912

Charles Crupelandt, 1913

At the Cycle-Race Track (Au Vélodrome), is an oil, sand and collage on canvas, painted in a vertical format with dimensions 130.4 × 97.1 cm (51 3/8 × 38 1/4 in), signed JMetzinger towards the lower left.

In the foreground a road bicycle racer is shown in various degrees of transparency that give way to elements of the background, blurring the distinction between distances near and far. The cyclists head, for example, is almost entirely transparent, the audience composed of mosaic-like cubes is visible through the head, neck and arm, an effect reminiscent of the artists Divisionist period. Metzinger's bicycle shimmers between the unique and the multiple, as if the two merge into one. The scene represents an extant photo-finish, a series of frames captured during the final sprint at the end of a race.

The presence of the other bicyclist is revealed by the rear wheel to the left of the canvas. Metzinger's painting appears to show the handlebars in two positions,^[6] but the handlebars along with sections of the bicycle frame are actually superimposed as a transparency (over the left hand, left foot of the cyclist and over the drive-wheel), representing two consecutive frames, one subtracted from the other, i.e., the road is visible 'through' the racer where the bicycle had been a fraction of a second earlier, as if to show motion through absence. With this type of game playing with contradictory visual codes (positive and negative space), Metzinger discerns the past and the present infinitesimally separated in time; while the perception of the future is left to the intellectual discretion of the observer to contemplate.

Cubist and Futurist devices appear superimposed in Metzinger's At the Cycle-Race Track, creating an image that is readable yet essentially anti-naturalistic. Cubist elements include the reduction of the geometric schema to simplified shapes, and the juxtaposition of rotating planes to define spatial qualities, printed-paper collage, the incorporation of a granular surface and multiple perspective. Parallels with Futurism include the choice of a subject in motion (the bicyclist), the suggestion of velocity (motion blur on the wheel spokes), and the fusing of forms in a static picture plane. Metzingers's work integrates the idea of an aesthetic generated by the modern myth of the machine and speed.^[7]

At the Cycle‐Race Track illustrates the final yards of the Paris–Roubaix race, and portrays Charles Crupelandt, the 1912 winner, according to the art historian Erasmus Weddigen.^[5] The race is known for its extreme difficulty and danger of cycling over the narrow cobblestone roads of northern France. The Paris–Roubaix has since been referred to as the Hell of the North (L'enfer du Nord), and A Sunday in Hell.^[5] Metzinger’s painting was the first in Modernist art to represent a specific sporting event and its champion.^[5] He incorporated into the painting his concepts of multiple perspective, simultaneity, and time, according to his belief that the fourth dimension was crucial to the new art that could compete with the classical French tradition.^[5]

Discover more about Description related topics

Tour de France

Tour de France

The Tour de France is an annual men's multiple-stage bicycle race primarily held in France, while also occasionally passing through nearby countries. Like the other Grand Tours, it consists of 21 stages, each a day long, over the course of 23 days, coinciding with the Bastille Day holiday. It is the oldest of the Grand Tours and generally considered the most prestigious.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the sometimes decadent affairs of those times.

Charles Crupelandt

Charles Crupelandt

Charles Crupelandt was a French professional road bicycle racer. He won stages in the Tour de France, but his biggest successes were the 1912 and 1914 Paris–Roubaix. The last cobbled section (300m) of the race, just before the velodrome, is named Espace Charles Crupelandt.

Road bicycle racing

Road bicycle racing

Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to a set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.

Divisionism

Divisionism

Divisionism, also called chromoluminarism, was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically.

Cubism

Cubism

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related artistic movements in music, literature, and architecture. In Cubist works of art, the subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.

Futurism

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures included the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. Italian Futurism glorified modernity and according to its doctrine, aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past. Important Futurist works included Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's 1913–1914 painting Abstract Speed + Sound, and Russolo's The Art of Noises (1913).

Paris–Roubaix

Paris–Roubaix

Paris–Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle road race in northern France, starting north of Paris and finishing in Roubaix, at the border with Belgium. It is one of cycling's oldest races, and is one of the 'Monuments' or classics of the European calendar, and contributes points towards the UCI World Ranking. The most recent edition was held on 17 April 2022.

We would often cross the broad avenue with the martial sounding name... The one that separated Courbevoie from Puteaux. It was in the peaceful garden of that welcoming household only a few years before the terrible year of 1914 that forms were born that, 50 years later, one would still think were new! We returned there often and soon we were spending our Sunday afternoons not merely conversing about aesthetic novelties but rather kicking a ball around or indulging in a spot of archery.

That garden was the place where my appearance as a cyclist at the Vélodrome d'Hiver was thought up. Gleizes and Villon claimed that I wouldn't be able to cycle 100 kilometres without putting a foot on the ground. I bet them that I could for the price of a lunch. It's actually a pretty hard thing to do to keep going over 100 kilometres on country roads. Neither of my opponents had a car and they didn't want to chase after me on one of those velocipedes. A journalist from our circle of friends suggested cycling in a velodrome which is actually just as tiring, especially for someone who is not used to it. But I agreed. A few days later, one morning at ten, I began my laps in the Vélodrome d'Hiver. An hour went by and then another. The spectators, Fernand Léger was among them, cheered me on with increasing enthusiasm until quite unexpectedly the sound of a gong brought me to a halt. I had won my meal by my honourable average speed. (Metzinger)^[8]

In 2012, one hundred years after it was painted, Metzinger's Au Vélodrome was showcased in an exhibition entitled Cycling, Cubo‐Futurism and the 4th Dimension. Jean Metzinger’s "At the Cycle‐Race Track", at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. The painting is one of the pivotal Cubist works at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The exhibition, curated by Erasmus Weddigen, brought together two other paintings and a drawing by Metzinger treating the same theme, in addition to several other paintings on the theme of cycling. Just as Metzinger’s painting, the show combines a passion for the sport of cycle‐racing with an investigation into the nature of the Fourth dimension in art; a topic much discussed in Metzinger’s immediate circle and alluded to in the number 4 visible in the stadium grandstand in the upper left quadrant of the painting.^[5]

Vintage racing bikes at the exhibition included one owned by Albert Einstein. The theoretical and sporting themes of the show were designed to illustrate theories of space and time formulated by Einstein and multiple perspective developed independently by the Cubists,^[5] and most notably by Metzinger, as early as 1910.^[9]

The combination of a sporting subject chronicling a new passion in French popular culture and an ambitious intellectual and visual apparatus central to the nascent Cubist movement qualifies Metzinger’s At the Cycle‐Race Track as a masterpiece. (Guggenheim, Venice)^[5]

• Jean Metzinger, Study for At the Cycle-Race Track (Etude pour Au Vèlodrome), 1911, graphite and charcoal on beige paper, 38 x 26 cm, inscribed JMetzinger 1911. Centre Pompidou, Paris – Musée National d'Art Moderne / Centre de création industrielle^[10]
• Jean Metzinger, 1912, Cyclist (Le Bicycliste), oil on board with sand, 27.2 x 22.2 cm. Private Collection
• Jean Metzinger, 1912, Racing Cyclist (Coureur cycliste), oil on canvas with sand, 100 x 81 cm. On 4 February 2020 this painting was sold at Sotheby's London for 3,015,000 GBP ($3,925,937 USD),^[11] setting a world record auction price for the artist. The work was purchased by a private American collector.^[12]

Related works

• 

  Tobeen, 1912, Pelotaris, oil on canvas, 147.5 x 115.5 cm, shown at 1912 Salon des Indépendants, and Moderni Umeni, SVU Mánes, Prague, 1914

• 

  Albert Gleizes, 1912–13, Les Joueurs de football (Football Players), oil on canvas, 225.4 x 183 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

• 

  Robert Delaunay, 1913, L'Équipe de Cardiff, oil on canvas, 326 × 208 cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

• 

  Umberto Boccioni, 1913, Dynamism of a Cyclist, oil on canvas, 70 x 95 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

• 

  Natalia Goncharova, 1913, Cyclist, oil on canvas, 78 x 105 cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Cycling 1908-1913

• 

  Charles Crupelandt (1913), a French professional road bicycle racer who won stages in the 1910, 1911 and 1912 Tour de France. His biggest successes were the 1912 and 1914 Paris–Roubaix

• 

  1909, the French cyclist Léon Georget (Big Red or The Brute), was known as The Father of the Bol d'Or, having won the race nine times between 1903 and 1919 in Paris

• 

  Gustave Garrigou, one of the best professional racing cyclists of his era, won the 1911 Tour de France, coming in 1st Overall, with 2 stage wins

• 

  Émile Bouhours, Octave Lapize, who won the Paris–Roubaix from 1909 to 1911, and Seigneur, Vélodrome Buffalo, 25 April 1909, start of the 100 km race

• 

  1912, Racing cyclists at the Vélodrome, Parc des Princes

• 

  Vélodrome, Parc des Princes, Boulogne-sur-Seine, circa 1900

• 

  Paris–Roubaix, starting line, 19 April 1908

• 

  Paris–Roubaix, starting line, 11 April 1909

• 

  Paris–Roubaix, starting line, 11 April 1909

• 

  Paris–Roubaix, starting line, 24 March 1910

• 

  Paris–Roubaix, at Chatou, 16 April 1911

• 

  Paris–Roubaix, at Chatou, 23 March 1913

Discover more about Gallery related topics

Albert Gleizes

Albert Gleizes

Albert Gleizes was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du "Cubisme", 1912. Gleizes was a founding member of the Section d'Or group of artists. He was also a member of Der Sturm, and his many theoretical writings were originally most appreciated in Germany, where especially at the Bauhaus his ideas were given thoughtful consideration. Gleizes spent four crucial years in New York, and played an important role in making America aware of modern art. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, founder of the Ernest-Renan Association, and both a founder and participant in the Abbaye de Créteil. Gleizes exhibited regularly at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris; he was also a founder, organizer and director of Abstraction-Création. From the mid-1920s to the late 1930s much of his energy went into writing, e.g., La Peinture et ses lois, Vers une conscience plastique: La Forme et l’histoire and Homocentrisme.

Les Joueurs de football

Les Joueurs de football

Les Joueurs de football, also referred to as Football Players, is a 1912–13 painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. The work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, March–May 1913. September through December 1913 the painting was exhibited at Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin. The work was featured at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, 29 November – 12 December 1916, Gleizes' first one-person show. The work was again exhibited at Galeries Dalmau 16 October – 6 November 1926. Stylistically Gleizes' Football Players exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in Du "Cubisme", written by himself and French painter Jean Metzinger. Guillaume Apollinaire wrote about Les Joueurs de football in an article titled "Le Salon des indépendants", published in L'Intransigeant, 18 March 1913, and again in "A travers le Salon des indépendants", published in Montjoie!, Numéro Spécial, 18 March 1913.

National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

Dynamism of a Cyclist

Dynamism of a Cyclist

Dynamism of a Cyclist is a 1913 painting by Italian Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) that demonstrates the Futurist fascination with speed, modern methods of transport, and the depiction of the dynamic sensation of movement.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, Italy. It is one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an 18th-century palace, which was the home of the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim for three decades. She began displaying her private collection of modern artworks to the public seasonally in 1951. After her death in 1979, it passed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which opened the collection year-round from 1980.

Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist, painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. Goncharova's lifelong partner was fellow Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov. She was a founding member of both the Jack of Diamonds (1909–1911), Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the more radical Donkey's Tail (1912–1913), and with Larionov invented Rayonism (1912–1914). She was also a member of the German-based art movement Der Blaue Reiter. Born in Russia, she moved to Paris in 1921 and lived there until her death.

Cyclist (painting)

Cyclist (painting)

Cyclist is a 1913 Cubo-Futurist painting by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova. The painting is considered an "archetypal work" of Futurism by its current holder, the State Russian Museum.

Charles Crupelandt

Charles Crupelandt

Charles Crupelandt was a French professional road bicycle racer. He won stages in the Tour de France, but his biggest successes were the 1912 and 1914 Paris–Roubaix. The last cobbled section (300m) of the race, just before the velodrome, is named Espace Charles Crupelandt.

Paris–Roubaix

Paris–Roubaix

Paris–Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle road race in northern France, starting north of Paris and finishing in Roubaix, at the border with Belgium. It is one of cycling's oldest races, and is one of the 'Monuments' or classics of the European calendar, and contributes points towards the UCI World Ranking. The most recent edition was held on 17 April 2022.

Léon Georget

Léon Georget

Léon Georget was a racing cyclist from Preuilly-sur-Claise, Indre-et-Loire, France. He was known as The Father of the Bol d'Or, having won the race nine times between 1903 and 1919 in Paris. He was also nicknamed Big Red or The Brute.

Gustave Garrigou

Gustave Garrigou

Cyprien Gustave Garrigou was one of the best professional racing cyclists of his era. He rode the Tour de France eight times and won once. Of 117 stages, he won eight, came in the top ten 96 times and finished 65 times in the first five.

Octave Lapize

Octave Lapize

Octave Lapize was a French professional road racing cyclist and track cyclist.

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