CAROL ESCOW 
BA Hons.German, M.A.Classical Civilization, Dip.Ed. Dip.Art Hist. 
Dip. Trans CIoL. MCIL 
Wildwood, Loudwater Heights, Loudwater, Herts. WD3 4AX 
Tel: +44 (0)1923 771810 
E-mail: carol_escow@yahoo.co.uk 


Translated text 

(Illustrations see next original article in german, 
hompage erasmusweddigen.jimdo.com modernere Kunst) 


JEAN METZINGER AND THE ‘QUEEN OF THE CLASSICS’ 
A CYCLOPEDIA OF CUBISM 
BY SONYA SCHMID AND ERASMUS WEDDIGEN 
Special Edition from the Wallraf-Richartz-Yearbook: Volume LIX: 1998 DUMONT PUBLISHING COLOGNE 




JEAN METZINGER AND THE „QUEEN OF THE CLASSICS’ 
A CYCLOPEDIA OF CUBISM 


BY SONYA SCHMID AND ERASMUS WEDDIGEN 

 
"Formerly a picture took possession of space, 
 now it reigns also in time”. 
 Jean Metzinger, August 1911 (note 1) 

 

The restoration of Jean Metzinger's  (n2) recently appeared study in oils Coureur 
cycliste (n3) or Racing cyclist of 1912 proved to be an iconological and iconographical 
investigation with surprising results (fig.1). All the more so, as it concentrates on a 
cubist painter, thrust far too much into the background by history and artistic criticism 
due to the present notorious focus on the prominent figures of Braque and Picasso. 

The small painting is in several ways a first attempt at uniting the theories of the 
futurist movement on painting, new ideas of pictorial simultaneity and representation 
of the „fourth dimension" together with cubist principles on organizing the picture 
plane and relating order, volume and color values. 
 

The picture and its versions 

 
Before a steep background subdivided into yellow, white, orange and red geometric 
color fields a racing cyclist (identifiable as such by a helmet, a horizontally mainly 
blue and red striped jersey and the number "4" on his back), is seen in half profile on a 
bicycle only semi-visible with slightly inward-curving handlebars. That the artist 
presumably applied the principles of the Golden Section to the vertical division of the 
planes, is natural considering his interests in mathematics (n4) and geometry, his earlier 
attempts as pointillist and in the final analysis his membership of the “Section d.Or”. 
A rising diagonal on the left, retraced in black, and two flags in the French national 
colors could suggest a grandstand. These two flags appear again in the famous 
large painting Au vélodrome (n5) (fig.2) in the Guggenheim Collection in Venice, but 
there in a spatially true-to-life situation. A further topographical indication is that white 
plane in the background, accentuated by an added mixture of sand, literally recalling 
the sandy track of a stadium or an arena.(n6) While Metzinger facets the inside planes 
of the racing cyclist figure in cubistic style, its contours remain realistic, the bicycle 
even depicted true-to-detail (with an indication of wheel spokes). Although in his 
searching backward glance the champion seems to express the dramatic pursuit 
motif of a cycle race, he remains if anything, in a rather static if not almost frozen 
position. Only the hatching of the spokes can display speed and only the forward 
bend of the body the nervous tension against the headwind, detectable in the two 
fluttering tricolors. 

Fig.1 Jean Metzinger, Coureur cycliste, 1912, oil on board with sand, 
 27.2 x 22.2 cm, private ownership, Switzerland 

Only in the above-mentioned Guggenheim painting Au vélodrome does the 
intention of making the sportsman's final spurt and victory a direct experience, 
become clearer: as defined by the Futurists the viewer is led there “nel centro del 
quadro”; one has indeed a real feeling of being run over by man and machine. By its 
rear alignment of perspective the arena is the vector for channeling, even for 
increasing the speed of the rider's action, in which the methods of representation 
make use of a solution that is half impressionistic, half cubist. 
The slight flutter of a tricolor emphasizes both the direction of the race and a clue of 
content: the following wind will also help the rider to victory. 

Whereas in the study in oils our cyclist conveys more the impression of a lone rider, 
in the final painting Metzinger has us taking part in a duel, by the addition of a rival's 
rear wheel on the left picture edge. Here the cyclist still in second place is saving his 
strength by keeping in the lee of the leader, enabling him in the last few meters to 
make one Herculean effort to beat his opponent. Metzinger illustrates the strain of 
this final in the shadowy simultaneous rendition of a second bent handlebar and in 
the increased contouring of the gripping fists: a sprinter clearly rises in the saddle, 
hurling his bike in rocking movements from side to side to hold his body upright 
without loss of strength or stability, allowing him to concentrate completely on his 
pedaling. 

Fig.2 Jean Metzinger, Au vélodrome, 1912, oil on canvas with sand and collage,
 130.4 x 97.1 cm, Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection 

 All that can be seen of his rival in Au vélodrome is the spinning wheel and green, 
racing shorts; but the surface too, on which the challenger is overtaking, is a fleeting 
blur of all the irregularities of the terrain, except for the area in the background with
its broad stretch of sand, its sharp- edged ins-and-outs anticipating as it were the 
overtaking movements of the cyclist.s spurt in simultaneous time and place. The 
speed of the prospective victor is so great that head, neck and right arm flash past 
just like schematic transparency over the crowds of spectators in the grandstands, 
the rider's flat oval face retaining little individuality despite the careful description of 
wavy hair with central parting beneath a close-fitting, „pudding basin. crash helmet. 
The illustration of a futurist idea, “one should be able to make out the scenic 
background by looking through a person's cheek” is literally achieved here! (n7) The re-
introduction too of graphic and descriptive black in wheel and rider for „depiction. of 
the course of events to accentuate anti-impressionist contour and to emphasize the 
depiction of automation, sense of touch, bulk, lack of volume, could be an 
experimental step into futuristic territory. In our study in oils, on the other hand, we 
find just traces of similar transparency and contouring, still mainly to divide and mark 
out the individual facets of color. Also the somewhat tentative approach to the way in 
which the figure of the rider is tackled makes it probable that here for the first time 
Metzinger was analyzing a racing cyclist's pattern of movement. 

Fig. 3 Jean Metzinger, Le cycliste au vélodrome, 1912, oil on canvas
with sand and collage, 55 x 46 cm, sold at auction in Enghien 1989 

Fig.4, Jean Metzinger? Le cycliste, 1912, watercolor, 46 x 38 cm, private ownership,
 put up for auction on 9.6.1994 at Drouot Montaigne in Paris 

The pasted newspaper cutting in Au vélodrome worded “PARIS-ROUB…” refers us 
to the famous, annual one-day race Paris-Roubaix. From Paris (start in Chatou near
Paris) the c. 266 km long stretch leads via St. Ouen, Beauvais, Breteuil, Amiens, 
Arras, Henin, and Seclin to the northern French industrial town of Roubaix on the 
Belgian border. Racing was introduced as early as 1896 by the directors of the 
Roubaix winter racing track (Théodore Vienne and Maurice Perez) (n8) and it developed 
from that time into professional cycling's „Queen of the Classics" Its popularity –for 
the 17th anniversary of the race in 1912, 10,000 sports fans are said to have visited 
the stadium alone –was attributable not least to the murderous stretch that included 
60km. of cobbles and unmade roads. Newspaper reports from the pre-Easter period 
of that year call the notoriously famous ride the “Hell of the North” (as now), for 
numerous punctures, drop-outs, casualties due to falls and tyre damage were the 
order of the day. A delirious, flower-throwing public lined the streets, where dust 
affected the riders eyes; even worse were the hundreds of tacks, (“les hideux clous”) 
strewn by the “bandits de la route” near Doulens causing devastation
to inner tubes on a catastrophic scale. Metzinger plays on these “difficulties” in a 
second newspaper collage “PNEUS” on the grandstand barriers. The sand- textured
track and the grey scoring might describe the above-mentioned unmade roads or 
alternatively the optical blur of cobbles at high speed. The number "4" attached to the 
rider.s back in the sketch has now become the flat warning signal set up on the 
grandstand fence, presumably indicating the number of laps to the finish. In any case 
in Au vélodrome, more restrained in color and fresco-like than the sketch, inclusions 
of sand are to be found embedded in both sky and grandstand area, just as if 
whipped up by breakneck speed. 

At present there are four more extant designs in addition to the final painting Au 
vélodrome: an oil painting on canvas (n9), a watercolor, (n10) a pencil/colored crayon 
drawing (n11) and a charcoal drawing (n12), all faithfully anticipating the picture.s 
composition. The most interesting study must really be the medium size painting on 
canvas (that we wish to mention, although unaware of its present whereabouts 
outside Europe after its purchase in Enghien in 1989). It is particularly interesting in 
that it is also composed with sand texturing spread over large areas of the painting 
that in their carefully defined limits stress the contrast between surfaces at rest and 
those in vectoral motion (fig.3). The two collage-texts, due to the direction in which 
they are read and their perspectival effect, act in all versions as a vector pushing 
towards the biker, so intensifying the speed of the protagonist. Whereas they are not 
yet displayed for instant legibility, (n13) the spurt and overtaking motif is emphasized by 
the appearance on the right of the bike of a third competitor. The champion fleeing in 
perspectival “Fall” in his now diagonally striped jersey is hence an „escapee" and the 
idea of doubling the handlebars– of more modern or more effective racing 
handlebars -–is announced though only in a whisper (n14). The pursuer's handlebars still 
have the complete curve of the Swiss study but the obligatory number „4" has already 
moved to the edge of the grandstand. Metzinger had not yet conceived the idea of 
dynamic body transparency but the discs of the wheel already bring to mind 
contemporary experiments in simultaneity by Delaunay and staccato-like alignments 
of the silhouette in the Futurists. analysis of movement. Futurism's great Russian 
representative Natal'ja Goncarova created a comparable equivalent in the St. 
Petersburg Cyclist 1913 (fig. 9), leaving Boccioni's Dinamismo di un ciclista of 1913 
(fig.10) from the Mattioli Collection and indeed even the Ciclista by Mario Sironi of 
1916 (fig.11) far behind as far as dynamics were concerned. 

The quite similarly composed but more subdued watercolor (fig.4) might almost be 
considered as a preliminary sketch for the „Enghien" version if the grandstand texts 
“PARIS-R…” and “PNEU…” did not refer unambiguously to the Paris-Roubaix race 
of the final version. In the watercolor the rider's hair is already parted in the middle, 
while in the „Enghien" study in oils the wavy hair falls in right diagonals over the 
whole of his forehead. In the watercolor the geometric shape of the surface in the 
right background and the stylization of the dark lower areas of the racing cycle 
clearly resemble the Venetian painting, the „flying" surface of the track too - in the 
“Enghien” study in oils still expressed in the form of diagonal strips – is now muted to 
horizontal hatching. The crowd in the grandstand begins to „infiltrate" the flesh color 
of the rider…  

Fig. 5 Jean Metzinger, Le cycliste, 1912, charcoal on paper, 34.5 x 28 cm,
 private ownership Mr. & Mrs. R. Stanley Johnson, Chicago 

Fig. 6 Jean Metzinger, Le cycliste, 1912, pencil and black crayon on cream-colored 
paper, 37.5 x 26 cm, Paris, Musée Nationale d.Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou 

Fig. 7 Jean Metzinger, Coureur cycliste Nº 2, oil on canvas with sand,
 c.100 x 80 cm, former private ownership Jorge S. Helft, Buenos Aires, Argentina 

Both of the artistically slightly weaker drawings were directly used to execute the 
final version: the one from the Johnson Collection (fig. 5) appears in its charcoal 
shading to convey the geometric concept of the stadium track in the stratification of 
real sand, while the collages (“PARIS-RO...” and “PNEUM...”) are already firmly fixed 
in place. Their Parisian counterpart (fig. 6) that might have a direct connection with 
the watercolor, sets up a more convincing vertical format (again one reads (“PARIS 
[RO...]” and instead "PNEUMATIQ..."). According to a handwritten date below 
the signature this is supposed to have been created in “1911”, not very convincingly, 
however, for reasons to be explained: the signature and the date below are written 
over an abrasion or erasure in the lower right hand corner and, as presumably quite 
often in Metzinger's drawings, only added later, a circumstance that has also led to 
doubts being cast on their authenticity (n15).
Now, according to the latest investigations, there exists between our Swiss Coureur 
cycliste, the „Enghien" version and the Venetian final version, a further large Coureur 
cycliste on canvas identified by virtue of a presumably authentic stick-on label on the 
chassis marked with “un cycliste Nº 2” and, according to archive material in the 
Guggenheim Collection in Venice, owned by the collector, Jorge S. Helft, Buenos 
Aires16, whose father bought the painting in New York in 1940 (fig.7). Its vivid 
coloration places it between our first oil sketch and the versions in oil. Again sand is 
mixed into the ground. Compared with the earliest version the racing cyclist has 
gained in proximity and speed, the diagonal grandstand wall, now much closer, is 
composed of white, vertical slats pasted over with numerous gaily colored posters, 
advertising various products (a cycle wheel with the inscription “…ABLE”, a green 
poster with “CY…”, one with the numerals “145” and finally in the background on the 
right possibly “PN...” (presumably to be followed by “EU…”). The slightly downward 
slanting “signal-4” (n17) on the grandstand post as in Venice and all other extant 
sketches is seen here almost ambiguously on the upper right arm of the racing 
cyclist. His handlebars are already losing their earlier inward curve (in the oil sketch 
„Enghien" it appears yet again in the challenger's bike!) and nears the Venetian 
version, the pedal and toe-strap, later so typical, also put in an appearance. The 
hunching of the back, the more vertical positioning of arm and leg, the „fleeing" 
perspective of the terrain, the dynamic of the cycling movement (motifs dramatized in 
the „Enghien" study) lie about halfway between the first oil sketch and the final 
version. Still missing are the double effect of the handlebars rocked from side to side 
and the transparency of the cyclist's portrait as he charges along, but in the shaded 
half-circles of the wheels and in the colorless and cubistic scheme of the 
background, in the terrain-colored stripes on arm and thighs and in a section of the, 
here unusually delicately patterned jersey, transparency and experimentation in 
representing speed appear on the scene. The angle of the cyclist's head lies 
between that of the first image looking backwards and all those that follow looking 
forwards: it is almost a journalist's on-the-spot description of a lap of honor, for there 
is little trace of pursuit! From the image it would appear that sand is used here more 
for providing a rough surface for the racer. 

In 1915 or 1916 the American collector John Quinn bought Au vélodrome and 
probably the „Helft" version of the Coureur cycliste. The purchase was preceded by 
an active correspondence between Quinn, the gallery owner Harriet Bryant (Carroll 
Gallery, New York) and the artist or rather his brother and agent Maurice Metzinger. 
At any rate drawings or earlier studies are neither mentioned nor is any indication of 
their existence given in the catalogue of John Quinn's collection. The close 
approximation in composition of the drawings and the watercolor to the Venetian 
painting and its connection with the „Enghien" version as well as the morphological 
parallels to the Argentinean „missing link" allow the conclusion that the little Swiss 
study in oils of the Coureur cycliste might have originated first. It was signed by 
Metzinger on the obverse when painted and additionally dated later on the reverse 
“1912”, but that probably happened only at the beginning of the Fifties, when our 
collector (who died in the meantime) acquired it from a Parisian dealer: Metzinger 
authenticated his preparatory drawing on the reverse in blue ballpoint: “Je certifie 
que ce tableau/a été exécuté en 1912 / Metzinger” (fig.8); yet since the writing tool 
invented by Biro Brothers „stylo à bille" first appeared on the market in the Fifties (n18), 
Metzinger's note is a postscript. The Guggenheim painting also considered for 
decades as "c.1914" provided until the present no direct indication of its date of origin, 
as it appeared signed on obverse and reverse but not dated (see below). Provided
one can believe in the infallibility of Metzinger's memory a few years before his death 
in 1956, then with a little iconomorphic logic all seven works must have been created 
at relatively short intervals in 1912 (sequence: the Swiss Coureur cycliste, the 
Argentinean Un cycliste Nº 2 of John Helft, the oil sketch „Enghien", the two 
pencil/charcoal drawings, the watercolor and the final Venetian Au vélodrome),
i.e. the first two at best a little previously and the rest a little after the race 
on the 7th.April (n19).
 
Fig. 8 Jean Metzinger, Coureur cycliste, 1912, oil on board with sand,
 27.2 x 22.2 cm, Switzerland (reverse after restoration) 

All versions depict spectator grandstands, barrier signs and at least one latent duel 
as lifelike as if Metzinger had used illustrations or reports from a sports magazine as 
a guide (just in case he was not present himself in Roubaix as a sports fan20). In 
1912, as reported in the sports paper “L.Auto” -amongst many others- a sprint lap for 
victory actually took place between two riders. The 25 year old Charles Crupelandt 
(number 13) from Roubaix and the “éternel deuxième” Gustave Garrigou (known as
“Lord Brummell” (n21)), rode in on the Sunday afternoon of the 7th April onto the sandy 
track (!) of the cycling stadium in Roubaix.s Parc Barbieux, following the dramatic 
tumble of the original leader Léturgie, to tackle the last two kilometers of the contest 
in six circuits of the 300m.long stadium. Crupelandt, an unknown three years 
previously, (in 1909 he won the first stage of the Tour de France – the very same 
Paris-Roubaix stretch - and in 1910 even won the Tour itself), is one of the youngest 
participants and wins by only two lengths from Garrigou (the latter at any rate: (“frais 
comme une rose”) after an eight hours and thirty minutes ride that only missed 
breaking the record by minutes with an hourly average of 31 kilometers (n22). Octave 
Lapize, three times winner and record holder from 1909-1911, fell back this time 
behind Léturgie into fourth place. 

If for comparison one examines more closely the course of the 16th. race of 16th 
April 1911, one sees the very same Lapize as solitary leader turning into the sports 
stadium four minutes ahead of the rest of the field. It did not come to a head-to-head 
contest; Lapize won then convincingly for the third time. Photographs show Lapize 
(in 1911 wearing Nº 1) with an unmistakable moustache. Considering the meticulous 
rendering of strands of hair for all riders in the Au vélodrome subject, Metzinger 
would hardly have omitted such a strikingly recognizable feature from the Swiss 
study. With the exception of the Helft version, where the cyclist does indeed sport an 
unmissable walrus moustache (and where, in spite of the slight averting of the head, 
pursuit cannot be expressly established), the others show a curly blond, beardless 
youth of Crupelandt's type. With some certainty then we can assume that the artist in 
at least six of the seven versions had the spectacular race of 1912 in mind. The 
Swiss sketch in oils23 remains by comparison topographically less definite, although 
the similarity of motif such as sand track, ominous start or lap number „4", the 
tricolors, the spokes as ciphers of speed and the rider's suspicious backward glance 
suggest that it might be the same race. The Helft version is the only one that might 
allow the people's darling Octave Lapize to be seen in the figure represented. Known 
jokingly as “le frisé", he remained after all, regardless of his Roubaix defeat, a certain 
and celebrated winner for a long time in almost all the national races between 1909 
and 1913. That, however, Crupelandt must be meant in all of the versions close to 
the final one is now proved by closer examination of the collage-text “PARIS-
ROUB…”in Venice. Underneath its black over-painted border the long undiscovered 
printed matter “CRUPELANDT sur LA FRANCAISE” gleams through! The cutting 
definitely comes from one of the countless sports advertisements after the race, 
whereby day after day the winning firms loudly recommended themselves to the 
public. In this instance the racing cycle-manufacturing firm La Française unbeaten 
for many years is recommending their star product, the Diamant model,ӈ direction 
tricolore” –the very last word in advertising jingles fit for conjuring up the fluttering 
national tricolors in almost all versions of Metzinger's Coureur cycliste … (n24) 

Having pinned down the experimental series of the Coureur cycliste to the first half of 
the year 1912 it would be worth defining the position of the motif in the rest of 
Metzinger's oeuvre that in that very year might possibly have reached its artistic 
peak. Among his masterpieces are Le goûter (also known as La femme au cuiller, or 
L’heure du thé ) in Philadelphia (even in 1911 and still from time to time described as 
the “Mona Lisa of Cubism”, amusingly as the original was stolen from the Louvre on 
21st. August 1911), Le portrait de Albert Gleizes in Providence (1911), the 
Danseuses au café in Buffalo (1912), the contemporary La plume jaune and Le port 
in Chicago, surely too the Paysage in the Harvard University Museum Cambridge, 
Mass., Les baigneuses of the Arensberg Collection and finally L’oiseau bleu of 1913
in Paris. The aplomb, consistency, certainty, balance of his creative work with 
masterpieces such as these form an homogenous framework of systematic 
advancement, in which all theoretical achievements (diaphanous transparency, 
purity of color, body distortion, pictorial ideas (true perspective with regard to planes, 
vectors of movement) and technical finesse (sand texturing, combing, collage) are 
used as a prototype and repeatedly practiced, from which, however, our cyclist troop 
tries to break out in almost ideological despair. The artistic character, in spite of all 
the cubist fashion for analysis, had previously gone through life composing passively 
and accumulatively. To infect it now with the evasive, corrupting virus of euphoric 
futuristic movement had this group of works turn into a metaphor for the indecision of 
the self-portraying if not ironical painter: was it possible to overtake the mercurial 
Braque and Picasso, Marinetti's arrogant convoy, the loners Duchamp or Delaunay 
in this grueling year of 1912 ? Every single one of Metzinger's Coureur cycliste is a 
sprint stage in itself for taking on with an ideology those rivals so dangerous for his 
future career: now color, now speed, now time dimension, now originality. Only in 
1912, at the moment of the greatest mastery of all linguistic possibilities of 
expression, did the time come for Metzinger to hazard the „Queen of the Classics. 
against the avant-garde. Similar courage, humor and comparable tenacity he was 
never again to bring to the challenging theme that was in reality indeed probably 
unrealizable, all the more so as war was to interrupt racing decisively for everyone… 


The Theme of Sport 

Sporting events, fairgrounds or dancehalls were since the Late Impressionists, 
Toulouse-Lautrec, Caillebotte and many others in the Paris of the turn of the century 
and especially after the “bankruptcy of motifs c. 1907-1910” (n25) regarded as favorite 
subjects by the young modern artistic set. Many Fauvists, Cubists and Futurists were 
for instance ardent sports fans themselves: the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 
Braque and Picasso loved boxing (the latter having their photograph taken in boxing 
pose)26, von Dongen's interest was wrestling. The Villon brothers, Robert Delaunay 
and Albert Gleizes were interested in football and rugby. In 1913 Gleizes painted a 
picture entitled Les jouers du football, Boccioni at the same time the Dinamismo di 
un footballer, and in 1917 Delaunay even planned a corresponding ballet with gaily 
colored „similar" jerseys for the dancers. He spent many hours in the sports stadium 
where he found corroboration for his artistic theories: geometry of movement and 
dynamic of color. This was how the painting L’équipe de Cardiff evolved as homage 
to the game of rugby. Severini, Picabia, Metzinger, Marie Laurencin, Sonia Delaunay 
and many others chose dance as a picture motif and regularly made a pilgrimage to 
the most popular dancehall in Paris, the „Bal Bullier" (n27) in the Montparnasse quarter, 
or like Severini, the dance analyzer par excellence, to the „Bal Tabarin" not far from 
the Pigalle (1912).(n28) 

Fig. 9 Natal'ja Goncarova, Radfahrer, 1913, oil on canvas
 78 x 105 cm, St. Petersburg, Russian Museum 

Robert Delaunay, Roger de la Fresnaye and the Futurists were addicted to flying, car 
and cycle racing (n29); like André Derain, who drove a Bugatti, the car-crazy Metzinger 
acquired a white Renault 20 CV that had won the Morocco rally. (n30) In 1913 Boccioni 
painted the Dinamismo di un ciclista (n31)(fig.10), and in 1914 at the latest Marinetti 
proclaimed: “We want sport to be a characteristic feature of art! “ The sports fanatic 
Maurice Vlaminck only became an artist after his career as a racing cyclist was no 
longer possible due to an attack of typhoid in 1896. Lyonel Feininger participated in 
and watched the sports of cycling and sailing, reflected in futuristic simultaneity of 
viewpoint in the painting Die Radfahrer in 1912. In 1913 Marcel Duchamp installed 
an inverted cycle on a stool thereby achieving an „OEuvre anartistique" that he later 
numbered amongst his Ready-mades. Braque too was an enthusiastic cyclist and, 
for example, undertook a cycle tour from Paris to Sorgues (near Avignon) in June 
1914. Boccioni enlisted voluntarily for military service in a bicycle battalion in 1915 (n32). 
A woman no less, the Futurist Natal'ja Goncarova, celebrated the vehicle in her 
epoch-making painting of 1913 (fig.9). Even poets joined in the general canon: Alfred 
Jarry in his novel “Le Surmâle” has the cyclist Marcueil winning a 10,000 mile race 
against an express train. Jarry was himself a keen cyclist and suggested to the 
artists that sporting events should be their inspiration not biblical stories (n33). 
Since the time of Ancient Greece when artists studied their athletes. body movements and 
developed the classical canon of form in the Olympic statues of the victors, when 
muscle and mind, athletes and artists, art and society were still closely interwoven, 
the interest of artists in general in sports and sportsmen had probably never been so 
great! Only H.G. Wells projected into this optimistic world in 1913 in “New Worlds for 
Old” that someday, “the unhygienic horse and the plebeian cycle would be banned 
from the streets…” 

Fig. 10 Umberto Boccioni, Dinamismo di un ciclista, 1913, oil on canvas,
 70 x 95 cm, Milan, Mattioli Collection 

Fig. 11 Mario Sironi, IL ciclista, 1916, tempera and collage on board
 75.5 x 64.5 cm, private ownership  

Did the fact that in the spring of 1912 the Paris-Roubaix race was won not as 
expected by Octave Lapize, but by the almost unknown Frenchman Crupelandt, an 
„inconnu indépendant", only winning the race again in 1914, offer a sports loving 
avant-garde enough material to make use of it pictorially? 

At that time Metzinger and his artistic colleagues met periodically (now and then in 
the above-mentioned spring of 1912) at Jacques Villon's in Puteaux (a suburb to the 
west of Paris, near which Metzinger moved in 1912). The start of the annual Paris-
Roubaix race took place in Chatou, not six kilometers away (due to the fact it was 
home to the sports-crazy, studio- sharing Derain and Vlaminck, the hotbed of 
Fauvism and its „School of Chatou"). One may confidently presume that Metzinger 
and his friends also made a pilgrimage to that great event (n34). Only minutes away 
from Puteaux too, as the largest and most popular park for sports and outings in 
Paris, the Bois de Boulogne. „Tout Paris" made its way there, to bet on horse racing
in the Hippodrome of Longchamp (a racecourse in the open air with grandstands), to 
watch the running in the „Stade physiologique", to follow the long-distance racing in 
the „Buffalo" cycling stadium or meet up with the cycling fans in the „Chalet du Cycle". 

There also was the Route des Erables (starting at the Porte Maillot) and reserved 
exclusively for cyclists. It was so obviously popular that on weekends there was real 
cycle congestion! That artists who were sports enthusiasts like Metzinger were 
inspired by this “Sports Mecca”, is clear. The incredible cycle euphoria of that period 
can be explained by the average citizen's almost complete lack of opportunity until 
then for escaping from the grimy city in his – as it was, very brief– free time. As the 
bike gained in popularity, the „little man" too suddenly gained the mobility and the 
freedom to access quickly, simply and cheaply the surrounding suburbs, parks and 
palace gardens. It was not only fresh air, the family picnic in the open and the joys of 
sport, but enthusiasm for the speed of movement in its own right and an enthusiastic 
reception for the latest technological developments that were also conducive to the 
new surge in cycling. The cycle was to the French at the beginning of the century 
what the Volkswagen was to the Germans in the postwar years from 1950 on. 
Interest in cycling alone, however, cannot be adequate reason for Metzinger's 
sophisticated series of studies of the Coureur cycliste.
 

Jean Metzinger and his intellectual milieu 

 
Jean Metzinger was born in Nantes in 1883 and began to study painting in 1900. In 
1903 he settled in Paris and in the same year exhibited his first works in the neo-
impressionist tradition of Signac and Seurat (n35), in the Salon d.Automne and Salon des 
Indépendants, becoming a member of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. During 
this period he formed a friendship with Robert Delaunay and in 1906 became a 
member of the exhibition committee of the Salon of that name. A year later he 
exhibited jointly with Delaunay at the Berthe Weil Gallery (n36). In 1907 too he became 
acquainted with Max Jacob, then through him, with Guillaume Apollinaire (whose 
Montmartre neighbor, Picasso he admired),he met Braque, Juan Gris and 
presumably in 1909 Albert Gleizes. Wilhelm Uhde's collective exhibition in the Notre-
Dame-des-Champs Gallery brings Metzinger together with Picasso, Braque, Derain, 
Dufy, Herbin, Pascin and Sonia Terk (later Delaunay). Metzinger was one of the first 
to recognize the revolutionary significance of Picasso's pictures and in his “Note sur 
la peinture” of 1910 (n37) highlighted what was subsequently, after a short fauvist phase, 
also mirrored in his own pictures. At the same time Metzinger founded a like-minded 
group of artists with Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Léger and Delaunay. Apollinaire 
characterized him in his article “Look out, wet paint!" - The Salon des Indépendants 
1910” as follows: “Metzinger will go far. Perhaps he takes on a little too cold-
bloodedly works that many a master might not be able to bring off. His artistic 
concept is never pedantic. This young man is someone to watch.” (n38) And in similar 
vein in 1910 at the opening of the Salon d'Automne not without sounding a 
cautionary note “Jean Metzinger's pictures look as if they have been hung in the 
dunce's corner. He has set his sights on experimenting with all the modern methods 
of contemporary painting. By doing so he is perhaps losing valuable time and 
wasting his energy […] It is sad for an intelligent painter to dissipate his talent in
sterile experimentation…” (n39) Metzinger is indeed interested in the most modern of 
trends such as the fourth dimension, simultaneity, Futurism etc, and tries to 
incorporate them into his works; though he still harks back to the classical 
perspective that other artists believed they had long outgrown. In the following year 
Apollinaire praised the very shortcomings he had previously criticized (21st. April 
1911) “Metzinger's works are the only ones there that one could call cubist in the 
true sense. Their power of attraction shows that Cubism is not incompatible with 
reality. This art we can name kinematic shows us every facet of the pictorial truth, 
without ignoring the advantages of perspective. […]. This art plays with pictorial 
problems and masters them too”.(n40) 

Although Metzinger was against the hierarchy of master and pupil or rather „Schools" 
of painting, he had taught since 1912 at the Académie de la Palette in the 
Montparnasse quarter where Le Fauconnier was head, and later at the Académie 
Arenius. He had a lasting influence on his pupils Nadežda Udal'çova and 
Ljubov.Popova who both carried on the cause of Cubism later in Russia where they 
spread the new techniques such as experimenting with sand-texturing, papier collé 
etc. As well as Albert Gleizes he counted the writers Reverdy and Cendrars amongst 
his friends. In 1912, in probably the most successful and most eventful year 
artistically, he joined the above-mentioned Puteaux group, to which Albert Gleizes, 
Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger as well as André Lhote, Marcel and Raymond 
Duchamp, Roger de la Fresnaye, Frank Kupka, Juan Gris, Louis Marcoussis, 
Francis Picabia and Jacques Villon belonged. (n41) They exhibited under the name of 
“Section d.Or”, which Metzinger had coined not least because of his study of 
mathematical proportions, the Golden Section in particular. His pictures, based on a 
preference for metropolitan life, are composed with balanced relationships between 
colors and form and use spiral-like displacements within the facet-like fracturing of 
the color planes. The series of Coureur cycliste of 1912 illustrate how carefully and 
painstakingly the artist refined theme and composition and, as Gleizes puts it, “seeks 
to master chance”. (n42) On the 3rd. April 1912 Apollinaire wrote of the latest Salon des 
Indépendants: “Metzinger aspires to attain the level of great painting. […] The time 
for speaking on Cubism is perhaps already past. The time for experiment is at any 
rate over. Our young painters want to create definitive works now.” (n43) That at this very 
period the greatest variety of experiments were carried out and Gleizes/Metzinger in 
their book “Du cubisme” (1912) literally made Cubism „socially acceptable", are 
proved by Gleizes. words on the twofold split of the Cubism of the prewar years:
“On the one hand the oeuvre of a Braque, a Picasso, Juan Gris too, who live and 
work in a class on their own, are already roped in by the art dealers and, having 
worked their way through the analysis of volumes and of the object, are in reach of 
the intrinsic matter of painting: the creative nature (nature plastique) of the flat 
plane). On the other hand, in the breach, right in the thick of the rising din of battle, 
Jean Metzinger, Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and myself; we are occupied 
mentally with investigations into weight, density, volumes, analysis of the object; we 
study the dynamic of lines; we at last comprehend the true nature of the plane. 
Finally Robert Delaunay; he is too exuberant, too little master of himself, to spend 
time in analytic investigation but his idea of the aim of Cubism is absolutely clear and 
intuitive.” And again: “So Cubism develops between 1911 and 1914 from the solid 
body concept of form (volume) into the „motion" concept of form (kinematics), which 
finally destroys the Renaissance idea of linear perspective.” (n44)

Gleizes and Metzinger saw themselves within the Puteaux group as the real 
theoreticians. Metzinger was even dubbed the “César des Cubistes” and elsewhere 
“prince du Cubisme”.(n45) Gleizes praised his clear reasoning, great knowledge and 
thoroughness “he discovered with the clarity of a physicist the building blocks of
structural design. (n46) At the same time he vilified the genius that gave birth to an art of 
irresponsibility and disclosed nothing more than incurable laziness. By “genius” 
Gleizes was probably aiming at Picasso, who did not concern himself with theories 
on Cubism or other directions taken by art, but strode forward at a rate that no-one 
could keep up with. Picasso and Braque tenaciously held the view that their works 
spoke for themselves and needed no explanation either in interviews or even 
personal articles. Such behavior, therefore, ultimately gave rise in many circles to the 
widely held and, in the final analysis, not unwarranted view that Gleizes and 
Metzinger, who since 1910 had exhibited the new achievements of their oeuvre in 
the Salons and published theoretical treatises, were the actual forerunners of the 
movement. The group around Gleizes and Metzinger exhibited jointly in the Salon 
des Indépendants in 1911 for the first time and to a man, despite all their diversity. 
Their protest, supported by the writers Apollinaire, Salmon and Allard at the General 
Assembly of the Salon Board of Directors, concerned the prevailing, somewhat 
arbitrary customs of hanging in the Salon and led to Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, 
Léger and Le Fauconnier being elected members of the Hanging Committee. Using 
their position they and their supporters appeared in the later legendary Salle 41, 
whipping up a storm of criticism and protest in the press on the day after the 
opening. Finally the “Section d.Or” organized their first independent united view of 
the new movement in autumn 1912 in the La Boétie Gallery with a total of 31 artists 
represented by 185 works, amongst them many now forgotten and even then not 
really painting in cubist fashion. (n47) Braque and Picasso were glaring in their absence. 
Marcel Duchamp spoke later in an interview of his first meeting with the artists of 
Cubism (1911): “When Cubism became a social phenomenon, it was Metzinger's 
name on everyone's lips.” (n48) But it was Braque's works that initially won him round (n49). 
Gleizes admitted: “Braque and Picasso exhibited only in the Kahnweiler Gallery 
where we took no notice of them.” (n50) In 1909 Braque fell in with Picasso's decision 
not to exhibit any more in the Salons, after the jury of the Salon d'Automne had 
rejected several of his first cubist works a year previously. As a consequence the 
works by the two friends were only to be seen sporadically in the small Kahnweiler 
Gallery, particularly as the latter in any case hardly showed their more important 
works to the public, only to preferred clients. 

The overt discrepancy between the „bande de Picasso" (Braque, Gris and several 
writers, Max Jacob for instance) and the stylistically far less coherent Puteaux group 
came about not only through the latter's targeted publicity as opposed to the former's 
reserve bordering on denial but was also increased by the contrast in living 
conditions. Whereas the Sunday circle with an almost bourgeois air met in the then 
tranquil countrified suburb of Puteaux in the studio garden of the Duchamp-Villon 
brothers to listen to lectures by mathematicians and writers and debate the latest 
scientific trends or rather the scientific funding for the new style, Picasso and his 
bohemian followers worked and lived in the poor wooden shacks of the „Bateau 
Lavoir". 

In 1911 Ardengo Soffici, poet, painter critic (and co-publisher of the leading futurist 
review “Lacerba”) differentiated ruthlessly (published in 1913) between the work of 
Picasso and Braque and that of the “Salon cubists” (n51) (he later changed his mind 
about Léger and Delaunay), of whom he wrote no less disparagingly than perhaps
the critic Vauxcelles on the Autumn Salon of 1911:”[they had taken on] distortion, 
geometrizing and „cubising" in a hit-or-miss way, without aim or intent, perhaps in the 
innate hope of concealing their banality and their academicism - ineradicable and 
fatal – behind triangles and other shapes. (n52) “Finally based on the connoisseurship of 
Wilhelm Uhde,(n53) Kahnweiler asserted – whose transcendental judgment on the 
cubist two-in-tandem was later corroborated by the whole of the art world -, Braque 
and Picasso 1916, they were the first and greatest Cubists […]. In the development 
of this art the merits of both were closely intertwined, [and their paintings] often hard 
to differentiate, (n54) so that the methodical fading-away and devaluation of the 
remaining Cubists began and continued in the writings of Douglas Cooper and Alfred 
H. Barr. (n55) Unerringly Apollinaire wrote in his book published in 1913 “Les Peintres 
Cubistes”: “Metzinger moved in the direction of Picasso and Braque and founded the 
Cubist City.” (n56) A vote in favor, not to be ignored off-hand, if one considers how early 
Metzinger took on Braque's. most advanced techniques such as sand-texturing (n57), 
punch- and wallpaper- designs (as in La plume jaune in the Johnson Collection of 
1912) or papier collé in his Coureurs cyclistes and combed structures in his painting 
Le port of 1912. While Gleizes indeed scarcely had access to Braque's or Picasso's 
atelier, Metzinger might possibly, through Juan Gris, have had a much closer 
relationship with Braque. Braque, Gris and Metzinger were not dissimilar in 
character. They lacked it is true, the playfulness, the mercurial creativity of the 
clown-like Picasso, yet as „techniciens", verifiers of new ideas, methodizers and 
theoreticians of Cubism they were taken very seriously. 

Metzinger's marginal contact with the Futurists is, it is true, more conjecture and 
hypothesis than documented fact, the more so, as many painted in cubist style and 
drew nearer to the movement only after 1912. Marinetti's first manifestos certainly 
struck a chord with him: not so much the first, in the “Figaro” of 20th February 
1909 (n58), a simple presentation of theoretical initiatives and anarchical offensiveness, 
as the technical manifesto of April 1910 (n59) that seems to be the very godfather of our 
Coureurs cyclistes. Even more significant must have been the futurist exhibitions in 
1912 at Bernheim-Jeune and the Boccionis in La Boétie. (n60) Also two paintings by one 
Felix Delmarle, both entitled Le port, must give food for thought when compared with 
Metzinger.s Paysage and Le port of 1912 or La fumeuse of 1913. The Cubist 
Delmarle, declaring absolute solidarity with the Futurists in 1913 with a violent 
manifesto against the “ageing hag Montmartre”, was not only a close associate of 
Apollinaire, Jacob and Salmon but shared his studio with Severini, a proven friend of 
Metzinger. In his “Comments on simultaneity in painting” of 1914 Delmarle 
acknowledges Metzinger and Gleizes as essential initiators of a Cubism that could 
have served as the starting-point for futurist aesthetics. (n61) 

From the end of 1911 to the beginning of 1912 Delaunay and Metzinger are 
fascinated by the whirling flecked carpet of Severini's Danse du Pan-Pan au Monico; 
one might even like to hypothesize that for the latter the vivid crowd in the 
grandstands of his Coureurs cyclistes reflects the sensational event of that 
hedonistic explosion of color.


On to new dimensions 

In the following the above-mentioned efforts of the avant-garde to use new scientific 
findings in art are briefly illuminated. 

The examination of Euclid's parallel postulate led after a series of attempts at proof 
reaching back into the ancient world, to the establishment of so-called non-Euclidean 
branches of geometry  (n62), developed quite independently of each other by different 
mathematicians (Gauss, Lobatschewski, Bolyia, and Riemann). These appeared in 
simplified, indeed in part incorrect articles in popular scientific magazines. If 
Apollinaire in 1911 refers to the fourth dimension, Metzinger and Gleizes in 1912 in 
“Du cubisme” to non-Euclidean geometry and the teachings of Riemann, then such 
concepts and theories were in circulation in the public domain and in the popular 
press from the early years of the century. They appeared especially in theosophical 
and philosophical circles around 1911 and 1912 (n63) (amongst the authors were Revel, 
Hinton, Leadbeater, de Noircarme, Valin and particularly Henri Poincaré (n64)), finally in 
the science fiction type of publications of the genre of Alfred Jarry (1871-1907), 
creator of the scandalous “Ubi Roi” of 1896). H.G. Wells (1866 to 1946), whose 
sensational “The Time Machine” appeared as early as 1889/1899 (n65) and whose 
psychic novella “Pyecraft” Frank Kupka illustrated in 1905, published regularly for 
instance in the “Mercure de France”, and his devotee Gaston de Pawlowski (1874-
1933) printed this sort of subject matter in long series on the front cover on his 
magazine “Comoedia”. Jarry commented in February 1899 in the “Mercure” about 
the Wellsian clearly cyclistic product and offered also pseudo-scientific advice, as to 
how one could put together a time machine with borrowings from Riemann and 
Lobatchewski, whereby simultaneity also came into the conversation. Jarry was a 
keen cyclist, and what had become the proverbial “gyroscopic, pataphysical”system 
of “Dr. Faustroll”, for conquering time, was mounted meaningfully enough on a 
bicycle frame (n66). Marcel Duchamp possibly reflected later on these pseudo-physical 
gadgets in his mounted cycle wheel Roue de bicyclette 1913 or in the drawing of a 
cyclist storming along a steep line in Avoir l’apprenti dans le soleil 1914 (n67)). 
Pawlowski was a journalist for various revues and newspapers and published “le 
Vélo” and “Automobilia”, before he edited the theatrical magazine “Comoedia” and in 
it (on 26th March 1911) reviewed Jarry's “Faustroll” fully and generously. His tale 
“Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension” 1912 pays homage to Wells and 
contains many a reflection, indeed „experience" on the conquering of time and space. 
The non-Euclideans and Riemann in particular come into the conversation and on 
the 20th March 1912 the traditional idea of time is replaced by the simultaneity of all 
existence (n68). Even if Pawlowski was not exactly receptive to cubist trends, 
appreciating more their theories (he reviewed “Du cubisme” by Metzinger and 
Gleizes on the 5th January 1913) he hailed their originality. Meetings and a lively 
exchange of ideas have to have taken place: his sub-editor reviewed the Salon des 
Indépendants 1912 on the front page of “Comoedia” on 29th. March next to 
Pawlowski's section “Abstractions d'espace” from “Voyage” etc; right next to an 
image of Jean Metzinger's cubistic painting Le port! By then at the latest the Cubists 
Gleizes and Metzinger, but also the theosophically and psychically inclined Kupka 
and probably, thanks to the latter, Duchamp as well had become readers of the 
magazine, something their texts suggest. 

Apart from Pawlowski,Charles Camoin, Max Weber, Roger de La Fresnaye and 
repeatedly Apollinaire between 1909 and Spring 1912 draw attention in lectures (e.g.
in November 1911 (n69)), letters and publications to the fourth dimension. In a typical 
simplification by Apollinaire, who has the habit of filtering the concept of time out of 
his approach and therefore initially misunderstands the Futurists, this is interpreted: 
“Without wishing to indulge in mathematical speculation, […] I would say from the 
standpoint of the fine arts that the fourth dimension has emerged from the three well-
known dimensions: it represents the infinity of space that perpetuates itself at a 
particular point in time in all directions. It represents space itself, its dimension of the 
infinite.” (n70) Probably the expression „fourth dimension. had come to his ears during 
conversations within the Puteaux artistic circle that took an interest in the 
metaphysical, pseudo-scientific explanations of the hobby mathematician Maurice 
Princet (André Salmon had inserted “Princet's strange aesthetics” in a column of the 
10th May 1910). In Metzinger's “Note sur la peinture” (1910) and in the memoir “Le 
Cubisme était né” (n71) his significance for the early period of Cubism is alluded to, 
although the insurance actuary was probably more of an exceptionally gifted 
dilettante. In 1912 he is said to have undertaken studies in geometry with Gris and 
Metzinger to implement non-Euclidean and four-dimensional ideas. Louis Vauxcelles 
was even of the opinion in 1918 that Princet had been the true father of Cubism. 
According to Gleizes, who was inspired by Bergson, the new four-dimensional 
pictorial space was to unite the contradictions between space and time or rather lead 
to points of interaction, while Carl Einstein wanted to see the destruction of the 
hierarchy of time and space. Ernst Mach (1838-1916) explained that the „seen" 
object differed from the „visualized" object as if by a co-ordinate of the fourth 
dimension i.e. the latter describes the plastic object in the representation. Maurice 
Raynal even went one step further by demanding from modern art:”…if then the 
painter achieves the representation of an object in all its dimensions, he then thereby 
realizes a work of a higher order than one that is only painted in its visible 
dimensions.” (n72) 

Metzinger was one of the first of those who from 1910 took up the time-space-motif 
in publications, in particular in “Cubisme et tradition” in “Paris-Journal” 16th August 
1911: The new artists had allowed themselves to move round the object, to deliver a 
concrete representation under intelligent supervision of several successive aspects: 
formerly a picture took possession of space, now, however, of the duration of time (la 
durée) too. The fourth dimension is thereby not really time in the sense of Wells. 
“The time machine” but regards that aid, the duration of time, as a possibility for 
expressing consecutive circumstances, i.e. the ability to realize a simultaneous 
multiplicity of views permitting the “idea” of a thing to be expressed in its total 
dimensions. These ideas are owed in the main to the above-mentioned writings of 
Henri Bergson (n73), in particular to the “Essai sur les données immédiates de la 
conscience” of 1889 that differentiates between two different concepts of time: on the 
one hand there is the measurable objective time (temps) of physics and on the other 
the time of human experience or the perceptible subjective course of time (durée or 
duration of time). When Metzinger concedes Picasso's achievement of a free 
movable perspective (n74) he acknowledges to Braque that it is due to him that the 
picture is no longer a dead portion of space but shines forth in its entirety in the 
duration of time. Plainly Metzinger then considered that Braque had to all intents and 
purposes caught up and passed Picasso in expressive endeavors ... Gleizes 
describes Metzinger's obsession for representing the „image totale", in September 
1911 in the “Revue Indépendante” below the dedication”: “…to space he will now 
ally time (or durée)”.
At the same time the new sensory physiology of the 19th century was relevant for 
the Cubists. Already in 1889 in Paris the first international congress of those 
psychologists took place, whose writings had been widely disseminated in France 
and were familiar to the Cubists. The discussions centered mainly on concepts of 
form and space, as well as questions posed on the processing of the different sense 
impressions in the human brain. The Cubists differentiated between sense 
impressions and the representations thus conjured up in the consciousness. While 
perception of color is recorded only on the retina, awareness of form requires the 
logical co-operation of the brain, since this is accompanied by representations. They 
denounced Impressionism accordingly as an art that was only concerned with 
visualizing color, whereby Cézanne existed in their eyes as representative of a “deep 
spiritual realism”. Form and space would be created only in perception through 
experience, in which all the faculties (sense of touch, sense of movement) played a 
part. From Cézanne's conversations with Gasquet it emerges, that this was always 
present with the former from the very first: “L'oeil doit concentrer, englober, le 
cerveau formulera.” (n75) But it was the Cubists who thought they were the first to give it 
radical expression. Picasso and Braque therefore made it their principle, to paint only 
from the concept. One of the most important conclusions in Gleizes/Metzinger's “Du 
cubisme” 1912 refers back to ideas in Poincaré's “La science et l'hypothèse” 1902 
(as well as those of Helmholtz, Wundt, Ribot et al. (n76)), who in his empirical theories 
on space reconstructs it from different elements of sensory perceptions and their 
interpretation in a process of association. The sense of sight alone would not be 
sufficient, since it reflects only a flat perspectival image on the retina. The sense of 
touch must be added, as also the sense of movement, in order to afford a complete 
concept. The fact that since 1911 or 1912 sand was strewn or worked into the 
pastose paint by many Cubists might be traced back to these theories. The sand 
made rough surfaces appear that rose relief-like above the surrounding forms and so 
created a tactile space (n77). Already in 1910 Metzinger directed these tactile pragmatic 
values, observed in Braque and Picasso, into the visual field of the fourth dimension, 
as confirmed by Salmon in 1912. According to cubist theory the perspective has to 
be sacrificed in favor of motor and tactile sensations, i.e. of a mobility in space , as 
Metzinger illustrated in 1913: one could represent things for the sake of a higher 
reality at the same time in different aspects on the same canvas (according to 
Poincaré's opinion the fourth dimension was „imaginable"). As Jouffret reports in his 
“Traité”, Poincaré had already maintained in 1891 that someone who dedicated his 
life to this task would perhaps be capable one day of representing the fourth 
dimension pictorially. Cubists like Metzinger but also an outsider like Duchamp, 
believed from time to time in such a realization, although they, in contrast to 
Apollinaire who acclaimed the fourth dimension of the new art as the ideal norm of 
perfection and higher reality (n78), retained an albeit Platonic, yet transcendental true 
view of the material world, rooted in nature. Raynal too (1913) was of the opinion 
that the Cubists represented objects not as „what they were", but as „what they 
thought they were" (n79) therefore as a concept–an expression originating from Picasso 
but reflecting more his experience of African sculpture than his reaction to non-
Euclidean geometry. Just as the experiments of the Salon Cubists reached their 
highpoint in 1912, Braque and Picasso suddenly did an about-turn and ushered in 
the so-called Synthetic Cubism using the new media of collage, text and paint. They 
were far more interested in painterly and inventive problems than the theories of the 
“geometricians”.
Picasso's view of the combination of (pseudo) science and art ranged from rather 
critical to dismissive. Except for crime and other novels, he hardly read any books, 
certainly not challenging (specialist) literature (by Bergson, Lévy-Buhl, Mauss, 
Riemann or Poincaré). From conversations with his friends meanwhile, scientific 
catchwords like „fourth dimension" (n80), „simultaneity" or „non-Euclidean geometry" 
became familiar. Nevertheless he always stressed that Cubism had nothing to do 
with any ideas coming from the natural sciences, history, anthropology or any other 
of the humanities or social sciences. (n81) Marcel Duchamp, who did indeed belong to 
the Puteaux circle of artists but adopted the new ideas more to give an ironic twist to 
his work, put it into perspective later: “At that time there were discussions on the 
fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry. But most of the views on it were 
amateurish. Metzinger was especially drawn to it.” (n82) And: “I have of course never 
seriously read the works of Riemann, because I was incapable of it.” (n83) “Even 
Metzinger, who was really intelligent, made use of his [Princet's] knowledge. One 
spoke about the fourth dimension, without really knowing what it meant. In any case 
it's still the same today. […] The rest of us were no mathematicians and believed in 
Princet. He understood how to put over the idea that he knew an incredible 
amount”. (n84) Metzinger himself explained in a letter to Gleizes dated 4th July 1916 that 
the fourth dimension was a spiritual one, harmony in the sense of numbers, for: 
“Everything is number”, and that his new sort of perspective was not the romantic 
one of a Picasso nor the materialistic one of a Gris, but a metaphysical, or rather 
mathematical relationship between thought and the outside world: “the geometry of 
the fourth dimension holds no more secrets for me. Before I only had ideas, now I 
have certainty…” (n85) 

The end result of such intensive discussions at that time on dimensions, space and 
time (n86) in art were applicable to Metzinger's certainly serious studies, so it may be 
proved with the help of the Coureurs cyclistes of 1912 that he indeed attempted to 
realize in actual paint the very theories that for many Cubists were so fascinating if 
not fundamental. Evidence is not least the puzzling ubiquitous „4" that in the 
foreground bears only a slight relationship to the event represented, as it was of no 
particular importance either for the identity of the rider or details of the contest. If we 
take it on the other hand as the notorious key for unlocking the fourth dimension 
oscillating between esotericism and science then in this series of pictures the very 
evident compositional experiments such as transparency, difference in texture 
(sand/smoothness), perspectival variance of the „abstract. plane and color 
discrepancy between pure color and non-color become more comprehensible. His 
experiments in introducing, after the abstraction of space, now also the Pawlowski 
“abstraction of time”, peaked presumably in the (unfortunately still missing) painting 
Nature morte (4e dimension), the sub-title expressing in words, what the number „4" 
means in Coureur cycliste. It must have been created at the latest during the course 
of the year 1912, as it was on view in the exhibition “Gleizes, Metzinger, Léger” at 
the Berthe Weill Gallery.


Simultaneity 

A further, until now, scarcely addressed concept is the so-called simultaneity, 
already in circulation in 1907 due to Bergson's “Evolution créatrice!” and turning into 
a catchword among artists after the appearance of the futurist preface to the 
exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune in February 1912. Apollinaire was of the opinion in his 
article “Simultanisme-Librettisme”of 1914 that Braque and Picasso had already 
practiced this since 1907, without, however, attaching any particular label to it (n87). 
Clearly the manifestos were known from the summer of 1910; according to Severini 
Picasso is even said to have been amused by them. Ideas such as the intersection 
of planes, the abolishing of the categories of space and time or movement were, as 
we saw, the subject of fierce discussion in the Paris of the day. Delaunay too had 
used the concept since 1912 in connection with the simultaneous contrast of 
colors, (n88) and Bergson had indeed established it in his philosophy of dynamism, (n89) 
namely in his “Essai sur les donnés immédiates de la conscience” of 1889 (“De la 
multiplicité des états de conscience: L'Idee de la durée”). Metzinger's “Note sur la 
peinture” already in 1910 reflects the use of the word. The cubist theoretician had to 
regard himself as particularly challenged, when the offspring of the French freedom 
movement rose against their fathers. The manifesto-style of the sentences of “Du 
cubisme” of 1912, almost sounds like an answer to the Italian futurists, (n90) a distinct 
distance is kept from Impressionism but honor is accorded to the predecessors, 
contemporary immediacy is insisted on, a „vision synchronique" is glorified, but 
Platonic perfection of form is also denied as an ideal and phenomena never 
expressed until now, such as depth, denseness and duration, are added to the 
artistic verbal treasury. The authentication perhaps of illustrating mass, distance and 
multiple aspects in a single time-related integration would be in truth a method, not a 
system; in the final analysis the artist follows his own tastes. (n91) The influence of the 
futurists on Metzinger is considerable. On the one hand he follows the suggestion as 
in the futurist manifesto, that one should see through the “cheek of a person right 
into the background” quite literally in Au vélodrome and its sketches, on the other 
hand he attempts to simulate movement using the cycle's swiveled handlebars, the 
flickering cycle wheels and the fast fleeting blur of the ground. Compared with the 
two versions of Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio 1912 or the three versions of the 
La mano del violonista 1912 by Balla, his experiments lack – perhaps with the 
exception of the indeed breakneck cyclist of „Enghien" – analytical dynamic thrust 
and synthetic kinetics, making them appear simply static. (n92)
 

Color 

Finally it would be worth comparing the different treatment of color in both cubist 
groups. Braque and Picasso had reduced their palette more and more from 1908, 
until they confined themselves to nearly monochrome grey, brown, beige, black and 
white tones, whereas the Puteaux group never restricted itself in color to this extent. 
Braque justified his simplicity: “color works independently of form […]; color was able 
to release sensations that disrupt space and is the reason why I gave it up. […]. The 
Impressionists had striven to express atmosphere, the Fauvists light and the Cubists 
space […].Color concerns us only in its aspect of light: light and space are two things 
that touch, and we treat them together”. (n93) By Braque perspective and classical 
solidity of space, which had to be overcome, were replaced primarily by contoured 
non-color values, since color was not to be separated from form. Delaunay in
contrast strove to represent space by the very means of color but if possible without 
form, in which he might have had a lasting effect on the artists of the Puteaux group. 
He, who mainly tried to realize the ideas of the physicist Chevreul (n94) and identified 
Bergson's “Simultanéité” with the simultaneous contrasts of color, invented a type of 
painting based solely on color complexes (called by him „peinture pure"). Color was 
for Delaunay the universal means of replacing line, perspective, brightness-
darkness, form and light and gaining movement, simultaneity of space and time, 
fourth dimension and rhythm, in which color, means of representation and object 
were one. (n95) The peak of Delaunay's simultané (simultaneity) was reached midway 
through 1912, when his book “La Lumière” appeared and the invention of the 
simultaneous pictures, of the so-called Fenêtres was fully developed: Metzinger 
seems to have been spurred on more by the teachings of Delaunay in respect of 
color than influenced by the tandem pair of Braque/Picasso. In contrast to the final 
stadium of his Au vélodrome that threatens to be drained of color by the weight of 
theory, the more spontaneous studies in oils of the Coureur cycliste are more vivid, 
indeed purer in color; but traceable in the change from non-color and transparent 
flesh color or the experimental topography of his scene-setting (sand) to the quoting 
of strong, almost pure colors (tricolors, jersey, grandstand etc.) is the hesitancy of 
the theoretician in giving free rein to sensual stimuli and the inconsistency of the 
artistic hedonist when setting about solving problems of content. Braque and Picasso 
also found a way of circumventing perspective without loss of color. Color now 
returned as an abstract value, indeed in its own right and not as something that 
belonged to an object and was thereby sacrificed to form and light. “It was necessary 
to return color to space. […] Using color came with papier collé. […]So it became 
possible to separate color quite distinctly from form and to see its independence from 
form. Color functions simultaneously with form, but has nothing to do with it“. 
(Braque). (n96) According to Kahnweiler Picasso had already been incorporating color 
again into Analytic Cubism from 1910, but had banished it repeatedly, since the 
bright unmodulated color was not compatible with the atmospheric light-flooded 
spatiality of 1911. Only in the transition year of 1912 (in the spring and summer) 
when he gradually reduced this sort of illusionistic spatial depth, did color again 
begin to have its full effect (e.g. in Violin, verres à vin, pipe et ancre, in Moules 
St.Jacques, and in the summer of 1912 in Paysage aux affiches and in both Guitare 
paintings). In the beginning (when he saw Souvenir du Havre) Braque was against 
Picasso's re-introduction of color. Only with the papier collé Nature morte avec 
guitare did Braque reach a (for him) acceptable “liberation of color, in that he turned 
it into an autonomous symbol that no longer modified a space or gave contour to an 
object but lay on the picture plane uncoupled from the drawing. (n97) 

Back to our racing cyclist's final lap: it remains to consider, why the initially so 
celebrated fourth dimension – in any event never directly mentioned by Metzinger 
and Gleizes in “Du cubisme” already disappears from Apollinaire's repertoire (n98) in the 
autumn of 1912, as in 1913 does all mention of Princet. The embracing of 
Delaunay's „Ideal Dimension" and his Orphism may be one reason, a further perhaps 
the public's satiation as a result of Pawlowski's popularizing, never-ending „science 
fictions", that drove the discussions of the Cubists finally offside into technical theory, 
perhaps even frivolous fantasy. 

If Metzinger did not like to abandon true perspective and did not do so contrary to his 
much more forceful theories (for instance his theory on “metaphysical perspective”, 
commented on in the above-mentioned letter of 1916) (n99), what makes him stand out 
is the uniqueness but also the singularity of his attempt to express „simultaneous":
movement: in the motif of the swiveled handlebars and in the kinetic forward thrust of 
the body and background. These pictorial ideas are not, however, incorporated 
coherently enough into the work as a whole; they remain anecdotal, artistically 
unmastered. The grandstands are, like their collage texts, pure perspectival and 
topographical tradition, fit just as vectors, accelerators of the flow from right to left 
and thereby suitable for suggesting a counter move to the rider: the conventional 
teachings of Euclidean geometry and perspective were stronger than the new 
demands for reassessment of values. Finally such an extremely intelligent painter as 
Metzinger should have recognized that his risky enterprise to have the fourth 
dimension perceivable in his Coureurs cyclistes was as a means of expression 
artistically as well as theoretically inadequate, as the false start between styles had 
proved. The probably covert insight into the soundness of the social and stylistic 
abandonment by the forerunners Braque and Picasso of the, at any rate, thinning 
cubist crowd of camp followers presumably played its part in discontinuing his 
cyclistic efforts. That the Orphists and Futurists were now already attempting to 
extend the dimensions radically beyond the concepts of simultaneity and dynamic 
(each trend in its own way): the former with „analytical discontinuity., the latter in the 
sense of the concept of a „dynamic continuity. that, as they asserted in a high-flown 
manner with Boccioni 1913/1914, they were uniquely in the position to realize ), had 
to discourage such a serious and methodical Cubist as Metzinger,from joining the 
further race to take part in their spectacular and tumultuous endeavors: all was lost 
at the end of 1912. The metaphor of the Coureur cycliste was to be turned against 
him in person: in the Venetian painting he is not the victor, because he cannot 
convincingly overtake the passing cyclist. His late work did not outclass his earlier 
attempts; even the adventurous sand track of Paris-Roubaix was lost in 1912 in the 
again smoother, oily bed of the more salon-suitable, more representative and more 
static easel painting… (n100) 



NOTES


1 Jean Metzinger,“Cubisme et Tradition”, Paris-Journal, 16. August 1911, quoted from: Edward Fry, 
“Der Kubismus”, Cologne 1974, p.73. 

2 Jean Metzinger, Nantes 1883-1956 Paris. For biography and bibliography of a later date see “Jean 
Metzinger in Retrospect”, exhibition catalogue, University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, 31.8.-
13.10.1985 (exhibition venues: Austin, Chicago, Pittsburgh), edited by Joann Moser and Daniel 
Robbins; the latter.s article “Jean Metzinger: at the Center of Cubism”, translated and published by 
Fritz Metzinger in: “Die Entstehung des Kubismus, eine Neubewertung”, Frankfort-on-Main, 
1990;ibid., Jean Metzinger, “Die Geburt des Kubismus”, pp.161-196 (translated from “Le cubisme 
était né”, St. Vincent-de-Jambron 1972); on the pre-cubist phase of the artist see Fritz Metzinger, 
“Avant le Cubisme – Vor dem Kubismus – Before Cubism”, Frankfort-on-Main 1994. 

3 Jean Metzinger,Coureur cycliste 27.2 x 22.2 cm; private ownership Burgdorf (BE), Switzerland. 
From verbal information given by Mrs. Božena Nikiel, editor of the catalogue raisonné of Jean 
Metzinger (75014 Paris, 33 AV. E. Reyer) the painting in question was bought in September 1914 by 
André Level (creator of the „Peau de l.Ours"),according to whose memoirs, from the Berthe Weill 
Gallery under the title of Bicycliste. It was sold as lot no.107, on board, size stated as 29/21 cm on 
3.3.1927 at Drouot, Paris, as Le bicycliste to a Mr. Bélier. – Material: oil painting with sand on 
commercial illustration board (3mm). Jean Metzinger attempted to enliven his surfaces with a subtle 
technique for applying color: adjacent to smooth sections of paint (flesh tint,” numéro du dossard”), 
discernable brushstrokes (yellow and red background) and areas of light impasto, the application 
increases to coarse-grained structures of sand inclusions (jersey and light-grey background). The 
white, thinly applied ground stops short of the upper corners of the picture edge. The paint color and 
the signature too lie there directly on the board support, the initial bright beige tone of which Metzinger 
uses to advantage, as he does the fibrous, unvarnished nature of its surface. The rather unclear black 
signature, damaged by trimming “JMetzinger” is like the childishly stiff handwriting of a First Grader. 
On the reverse are the following inscriptions and labels: 

(1). A full page newspaper article attached with very yellowed adhesive tape [removed] of 
27.2.1953 (NZZ morning edition) by Franz Meyer (director of the Basle Museum of Art),
“Der Kubismus-eine Rückschau”. It was a critique of the first comprehensive exhibition of 
Cubism “Le Cubisme 1907-1914” in the Musée National d.Art Moderne, Paris, 30.1. - 
9.4.1953. The acquisition of the painting would have taken place very close to the date of 
the newspaper cutting. 
(2). At the very bottom left the remains of a torn-off gallery label with blue double-lined edging 
93.5 x 7.7 cm) with lettering beginning “GAL…”[possible: “GALERIE BERTHE WEILL”, 
where Metzinger last exhibited in January 1913]. 
(3). (Beneath the newspaper cutting 1.) white, longitudinal right-angled gallery label with an 
accompanying blue line identical to the above that is cut in half with a blade and torn off, 
with the handwritten text in ink: “[printed: No.] 1230 Metzinger/Coureur Cycliste 3F”. 
(4). Oval label, white with three lines with a sparkling, blue, decorative edge. The penciled 
“91” is crossed out several times in pencil. 
(5). Four crossed out (partly illegible numbers-inscriptions with blue crayon amongst which 
“case 46” and eventually “1230”. 
(6). With similar blue crayon underneath written large: “96: 198”. 
(7)(.) In the middle of the board in blue ballpoint signature and date by Metzinger himself: “Je 
certifie que ce tableau a était éxécuté en 1912/Metzinger”. 
(8). Underneath upside down three numbers 85/55/40 circled with red ballpoint, the last 
crossed out. 
(9). Below on the right oval, the red stamp of an (art-materials-) supplier (upside down): “THE 
PARIS AMERICAN ART Co/125 Bould. du Montparnasse/…/Rue Bonaparte, 2/PARIS” 
above “FO…10” [perhaps the indication of a standardized artist.s board]. 
(10). Several illegible scattered traces of varicolored letters and numbers. Condition: The board 
has turned brown and has been scratched repeatedly on the reverse. Pieces of synthetic 
adhesive tape have penetrated the stretcher, discoloring it. As also lime from a canvas-
passe-partout-adhesive seal, which on the obverse and on the edges tore off a layer of 
paint in small lumps. Every corner of the painting is abraded. In the lower left corner there 
are lacunae in the layers of paint. The surface of the obverse was until restoration in 1997 
extremely soiled especially in the sand-granulation and the grooves of the brush-strokes. 
In the dark red jersey stripe a few sand particles are missing. There is fine craquelure in 
this area. Dark spots in the whitish background are grains of sand stripped bare of their 
layer of paint. About 1 cm above the number on the rider.s back as on the right foot there 
are fairly small lacunae. 


4 Jean Metzinger describes in his memoirs “Le Cubisme était né” his interest in mathematics: “This 
knowledge gave me a feeling for art. It is number that gives expression to sound and silence, light and 
shade, form and void. Michelangelo and Bach seemed to me like divinely blessed mathematicians. I 
already felt then that for an artwork to endure it had to be based on mathematics”. And: “Undying art 
is based on certain mathematical principles”. Fritz Metzinger 1990 [note 2], pp.167,173. 

5 Oil paint, sand and collage on canvas, 130.4 x 97.1 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. 

6 The word “arena” describes from Roman times the sandy surface of a stadium or an amphitheatre. 
See: Sonya Schmid, “Vom Sand in der Kunst”, Diplomarbeit, Fachklasse für Konservierung & 
Restaurierung, Bern 1996. In our study sand is used by Metzinger apparently for the first time and 
truly in a singularly coarse-grained, not so much homogenous as experimental application. 

7 From the futurist manifesto by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo D. Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla and 
Gino Severini (German translation from the journal “Der Sturm”, published by Herwarth Walden, 
Berlin, March 1912, yr.2, no.103, pp.822-824; cf. Johanna Eltz,” Der italienische Futurismus in 
Deutschland1912-1922, Ein Beitrag zur Analyse seiner Rezeptionsgeschichte”, Bamberg, 1986). 

8 The booming factories of Roubaix still manufacture the brightly colored cycling jerseys for all the 
great races and might still be sponsors to this day. 

9 Le cycliste au vélodrome, oil on canvas, sand and collage, 55 x 46 cm, auctioned in Enghien, Hôtel 
des ventes, 1989, auctioneers,Champin, Lombrail, and Gautier for the astonishing price of 3,050, 000 
FF. (Dr. Fritz Metzinger assesses the date of the sale as 21.11.1993/ in a friendly message of 20.1. 
1998). According to Mrs. B. Nikiel's verbal message, Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus's grandfather had owned the picture 
since 1914;  it passed to Mr. Alfred Flechtheim in Düsseldorf. 

10 Le cycliste, watercolour, 46 x 38 cm, in private ownership, offered for sale in Paris on 9.6.1994 at 
Drouot/Montaigne in Paris (estimate 350-450,000 FF; no information on sale; according to a message 
from Dr. Fritz Metzinger (note 9). Mrs. B. Nikiel expressed strong doubts in an early execution by Jean 
Metzinger. 
A rather large oval canvas with trois cyclistes du Paris-Roubaix (with oversize lettering of 
the towns taking part in the race, and numbers "5" and "7") had been presented to the author and Mrs.
Nikiel in April 2000 (private German ownership) for examination and authentification. Neither of us 
could accept the picture as original but as „workshop-of", with a date somewhere between 1912 and 
1914 (see illustration on homepage: erasmusweddigen.jimdo.com under: neuere Kunst/Metzinger). 

11 Le cycliste, pencil and black crayon on cream-colored paper, 37.5 x 26 cm, Musée National d'Art 
Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (in: exhibition catalogue Iowa City [note 2], fig.51. The 
already scheduled (Collage-) texts still have slight variations (“PARIS-RO?]” and [“PNEUMAQ...” 
[“UES”]. 

12 Le cycliste, charcoal on paper, 34.5 x 28 cm, owned by Mr. & Mrs. R. Stanley Johnson (in: 
exhibition catalogue Iowa City [note 2], fig.50). 

13 The letters seem to be taken from the titles of a sports magazine such as “MIDI...” (“-SPORT”etc.). 

14 The later handlebar silhouette still merges with the calf muscles of the cyclist, already allowed for in 
the first sketch. 

15 See: Angelica Zander,” Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice”, The Solomon R. Guggenheim 
Foundation, New York 1985, p.533. 

16 Due to a friendly message and a copy sent by the conservator Renata Rossani. J. Helft gives the 
measurements as 199 x 80 cm in a letter to Daniel Robbins, dated 18.5.1988. 

17 Possibly an optical reminiscence of a lap signal, of which there must have been six that veered on a 
slant to the race track and so seemed perspectivally to tilt downwards. From this „4. the idea of 
transparency might have arisen: it wanders, as if from the back of the cyclist over his arm to the 
palisade and leads a sort of special double life. Since this „4" appears in all versions of the Coureur 
cycliste, Metzinger must have attached great significance to it, indeed even “pataphysical” function (in 
[note 66] Alfred Jarry.s sense). 

18 Joann Moser refers to incorrect authentifications in the early Fifties (and in particular shortly before 
his death) by Metzinger in: exhibition catalogue Iowa City [note 2], p.7ff. naming a landscape of 1913, 
pp.44/47, note 12, with the identical writing on the reverse “je certifie...” 

19 Daniel Robbins, in “The Dictionary of Art”, Grove 21, 1996, p.363ff., dates Au vélodrome also to 
1912, as he already stated in the exhibition catalogue Iowa City [note 2], p.43 (“1911/12”); Fritz 
Metzinger would prefer to see it set earlier. 

20 Since 1896 the Grand-National-Race has been a sporting and tourist magnet; in 1998, on Sunday, 
April 12th for the 96th time, there was still (of the 266.5km) the matter of 50 landmarked kilometers of 
cobbles to organize; according to the search the stretch had very bad bends and its start was in the 
meantime transferred to Compiègne, 60km north of Paris. 

21 According to the famous but mishap- prone dandy George “Beau” Brummell (1778-1840); almost all 
leading riders of that time had characteristic, sometimes caricaturing nicknames. 

22 For the fourth time the firm La Française – “Marque à direction tricolore” – is the greatly acclaimed 
winner on Dunlop in large type on every page of advertising for days on end. Roubaix celebrates its 
son and his “lutte...qui fut tout simplement homérique” with the lap of honor to the sound of the 
Marseillaise. All four of the leading riders are French – and so acclaimed – „Northerners. (the 
5th.place went to the Belgian Odile Defraye, Tour-de-France winner in 1912) and are within the same 
grouping. 

23 That Metzinger regarded this only as a study or sketch for a larger picture, is shown in the modest 
price of only three francs that he had noted down on the label on the reverse; then the equivalent of 
an average lunch from the menu. 

24 An appealing interpretation would be that Metzinger wanted originally to create a monument to 
Octave Lapize, at that time the greatest French champion but by the surprising victory of Crupelandt 
in Roubaix according to the „Helft. version, modified the identity of the rider, even depersonalizing him 
by transparency and suggesting the fateful inconstancy of victory in itself in the collages “PNEUMA...”, 
finally the man from Roubaix was helped to win his laurel wreath not least by destiny(Pneuma=the 
Holy Ghost, the apparitional champion is literally „a ghost rider.), lungs of steel(Pneuma=breath, the 
ribcage of the bike rider expands tremendously), a kind following wind(pneuma=breeze, the fluttering 
tricolor is just above the tyre-advert) and the sound condition of his tyre tubes (Pneumatiques, 
“PNEUS” of the final version), while Lapize was forced to change the last twice. Metzinger was 
educationally enough of a classical philologist and, as vouched for by Bernard Dorival, with an ironic 
smile” (see “Jean Metzinger 1883 to 1956”, exhibition catalogue “Atelier sur l.herbe”, Ecole des 
Beaux-Arts, Nantes, 4.-26. 1.1985, ed. Bernard Dorival, p.9) blessed with enough good humor to 
have had a joke inserted in his vélodrome, like the allusive „4" (see p.249) and to display the theme, 
so unusual for him, to his own satisfaction. 

25 Robbins in: “Fritz Metzinger 1990” [note 2], p.83.

26 The six monumental Boxing scenes by George Bellows have been famous since 1919. In 1911 
Dunoyer de Segonzac painted the picture Combat de boxe. The mad craze for boxing-, rugby-and 
crowd sports came from the USA, where a certain James H. Daugherty illustrated baseball games 
and Max Weber introduced the futuristic mass movement painting, not without publicizing himself as 
the first to speak about the fourth dimension in art. Joseph Beuys won even on points of a political 
dimension in Boxing match for direct democracy against his sculptor friend Abraham David Christian 
on the last day of „documenta 1972. in Cassel. 

27 Marcel Duchamp told Pierre Cabanne he had seen Delaunay in the „Bal Bullier" making long 
speeches; Pierre Cabanne, “Gespräche mit Marcel Duchamp (Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp)”, 
Cologne (Paris) 1972, p.24ff. 

28 For example Gino Severini's La danseuse obsédante 1911, Dynamisme d’une danseuse as well as 
Danseuse bleue (1912) and countless others; cf. also Picabia's Danses à la source or Jean 
Metzinger's La danseuse (au café) in Buffalo, all in 1912. 

29 Braque liked his nickname of Wilbur, after one of the Wright brothers, who died on 30.5.1912 as a 
result of an air crash. 

30 This before World War II, see Fritz Metzinger 1990 [note 2], p.40. 

31 1913, Gianni Mattioli Collection, exhibited in autumn 1997 in the Guggenheim Collection, Venice. 

32 Apollinaire, in his column “La Vie anecdotique” in the Mercure de France of 16.October 1916, 
mocked Marinetti's manifesto on the new „religion of speed": “no doubt, during their deployment as 
voluntary cyclists God, whom one has always imagined to be a triangle, appears in the form of a 
bicycle [...] He made the wheels rotate with such unbelievable rapidity that until now had only been 
the fortune of that class of angels [...] who had to serve as wheels for the heavenly chariot.” Quoted 
from: Hajo Düchting,” Apollinaire zur Kunst · Texte und Kritiken 1905-1918”, Cologne 1989, p.272. 

33 The journalistic cliché of representing a sporting contest as a biblical Way of the Cross, had Alfred 
Jarry even dressing up a „Passion Christi" as a cycle race up a mountainous terrain (1903). 

34 It is possible that Metzinger and his friends were even present in person at the final in Roubaix; the 
French state railway had halved the price of the tickets to Roubaix especially for spectators. 

35 Here see Fritz Metzinger 1994 [note 2] and Fritz Metzinger/Daniel Robbins/Jean Metzinger 1990 
[note 2]. 

36 According to a friendly remark by Fritz Metzinger (6.4.1998) contact with her seems to have been 
established even earlier, “as she had a soft spot for newcomers to Paris”. 

37 Jean Metzinger: “Cézanne showed us forms as they are in reality of light, Picasso, however, 
delivers up to us the genuine evidence of its true life in the world of our thoughts – he reveals a free, 
mobile perspective...”, see Patricia Leighten, Editors Statement: “Revising Cubism”, Art Journal, 47, 
1988, no.4, p.270. 

38 Düchting [note 32], p.96. 

39 Düchting [note 32], p.109. 

40 Authors „emphases; See Düchting [note 32],p.120; and on the Autumn Salon 1911, the Cubists of 
Salle 8: “Metzinger's powers of imagination have presented us this year with two pictures, whose 
elegance of line and color at least bear witness to a very sophisticated style of painting. Furthermore 
Metzinger paints completed pictures, a rare occurrence these days. He is now in full possession of his 
artistic powers. He has freed himself from other influences and his palette is rich and refined.” 

41 Jean Metzinger remembers in “Le Cubisme était né”: “Gleizes took me to the Duchamp-Villon 
brothers [in Puteaux]. Several years before that dark day in 1914, in this peaceful garden, [...] the 
forms were developed that fifty years later one dared to represent as new!” Quoted from: Fritz 
Metzinger 1990 [note 2], p.194. 

42 Albert Gleizes, “Souvenirs · Le Cubisme 1908-1914”, Cahiers Albert Gleizes, I, Lyon 1957 
(Souvenirs 1944). 

43 Düchting [note 32], p. 161. 

44 Gleizes [note 42], p. 17 and p. 16. 

45 André Salmon on 3rd. October 1911 in Paris Journal, see Fritz Metzinger 1990 [note 2], note 90, 
p.104. 

46 Albert Gleizes, “Kubismus” (Neue Bauhausbücher, publ. by Hans M. Wingler), Mainz/Berlin 1980, 
p.19. 

47 In René Blum.s preface to the exhibition catalogue Salon de la Section d.Or, Paris, Galerie la 
Boétie, 64 rue la Boétie, 10.10.-30.10. 1912, the Salon Cubists sought to distance themselves from 
the “bande de Picasso”. Blum commented that no sort of foreign influence was to be distinguished in 
the works, and that “the exhibitors were obligated only to each other", i.e. did not deliver a second-
hand Cubism compared to the Montmartre Group. 


48 Cabanne [note 27 ], p. 28. 

49 Ibid. p.27. 

50 Gleizes [note 46], p. 11. 

51 So-called, because the Puteaux Group exhibited in the Salons “des Indépendants” and 
“d.Automne”. 

52 “Picasso und Braque" - “Die Geburt des Kubismus”, exhibition catalogue Kunstmuseum Basel, 25.2-
4.6. 1990,ed. William Rubin, Munich 1990, p.38. 

53 Wilhelm Uhde, who knew and visited Picasso even earlier that Kahnweiler, considering the over-
exercised problem of precedence: “Cubism owes a great deal to Braque” and Picasso and Braque 
had: “...hand in hand left the world of mere appearances behind them and taken another by storm [...]: 
both of the friends were working on solving the same problems, whereby now the one, now the other 
discovered the means of apparently reaching identical goals.” Uhde, intuitive sleepwalker and 
collector of quality, also saw at any rate important differences between the work of Braque and 
Picasso. The former he estimated as “clear, controlled, bourgeois”, whereas Picasso was “bleak, 
excessive and revolutionary”, to their “spiritual marriage” Braque brought perceptibility, Picasso the 
gift of plasticity; see Wilhelm Uhde, “Picasso et la tradition française”, Paris 1928, p.39. 

54 Rubin [note 52], p. 39. 

55 Ibid. p. 40; Uhde [note 53], p. 39. 

56 Guillaume Apollinaire, “Les peintres cubistes · Méditations esthétiques”, Paris 1913 (Geneva 1950), 
p.66. 

57 As the portrait of Albert Gleizes in Rhodes Island has been proved by Fritz Metzinger (in: Fritz 
Metzinger 1990 [note 2 ], p. 124, fig.10) and Joann Moser by means of unambiguously dated and 
signed preparatory studies (see exhibition catalogue Iowa City [note 2 ], p.55, figs. 44-46) to be 
already in existence in 1911, this painting seems to be the first to contain sand inclusions after their 
initiator Braque, in so far as all studies in oils of the Coureur cycliste must have been first set up in 
1912! 

58 The introductions dwells powerfully upon a spectacular car accident suffered by Marinelli as a 
consequence of a crash with two cyclists, theses four and six proclaim the beauty of speed; time and 
space are dead, eternal speed raises them into the Absolute. 

59 “...Why should one continue to create, without taking into account our visual possibilities to produce 
a result, similar to X-rays?!” – and, textually: “E, talvolta sulla guancia della persona con cui parliamo 
nella via noi vediamo il cavallo che passa lontano. I nostri corpi entrono dei divani su cui ci sediamo e 
i divai entrano in noi, cosÏ come il tram che passa entra nelle case...” – “Noi porremo lo spettatore nel 
centro del quadro.” – “[Noi proclamiamo ] che il moto e la luce distruggono la materialità dei corpi.” 
From: Luciano De Maria (publ.), “Marinetti e il futurismo”, Verona 1973, p.24. 

60 When Boccioni and Carrà travelled to Paris in October 1911 in preparation for their exhibition in 
February 1912, they also paid a visit arranged by Severini to Metzinger's atelier that is said to have 
impressed Boccioni in particular; see Linda Dalrymple Henderson, “The Fourth Dimension and Non-
Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art”, Princeton University Press 1983, p.112. 

61 “Futurismo e Futurismi”, exhibition catalogue Palazzo Grassi, Venice, publ. by Pontus Hulten, 
Venice 1986, p.463ff., fig. p.279. 

62 Non-Euclidean geometry is the generalization of Euclidean that differs from the latter in non-
recognition of the axiom of parallels. Euclid postulated that “if two lines are drawn which intersect a 
third in such a way that the sum of the measures of the two interior angles on one side is less than the 
sum of the measures of two right angles, than the two lines must intersect each other on that side if 
extended far enough... This is not, as one originally thought, dependent on the other geometric 
axioms. Modification allows other geometric axiomatic systems that, like Euclid's, are in themselves 
assertible, yet can no longer be full comprehended by graphic images but only be thought through in 
logical abstraction. Most theories on cosmology adopt a non-Euclidean approach to the universe, in 
which only “small” triangles approximate Euclidean characteristics (see “Brockhaus-Enzyklopädie”, 
Wiesbaden 1971, vol.13. 

63 Cf. Henderson [note 60], p.45f.; the excellent study comes to the conclusion: “In fact, for an artist 
like Jean Metzinger, la quatrième dimension may well have become a guiding principle of 
painting”(see Düchting [note 32], pp.168, 335, notes17,19; there further bibliography). 

64 From whose work “La science et l'hypothèse” 1902 Metzinger and Gleizes drew the impetus for the 
tactile and mobile sensations for their book “Du cubisme” of 1912 and for the possibility to perceive 
higher spatial dimensions: cf. Wolfgang Drechsler, Marcel Duchamp und die Zeit in: “Zeit – Die vierte 
Dimension in der Kunst”, exhibition catalogue Kunsthalle Mannheim, 11.7. – 1.9.1985, publ. by Michel 
Baudson, Weinheim 1985, p.1987 f.

65 “The Time Machine” to which Egon Friedell wrote such a congenial sequel in his “Reise mit der 
Zeitmaschine” (publ. 1946). 

66 The complete works only appeared in 1911 after the death of the author (1907), after “Dr. Faustrolls 
Abenteuer” had been serialized in various newspapers; see A. Jarry, “Gestes et opinions du dr. 
Faustroll, pataphysicien” (neo-scientific novel, followed by Spéculations), Paris 1911, p.105. 

67 Jean Clair also refers to Jarry.s above-mentioned Spéculations “Marcel Duchamp · Catalogue 
raisonné”, vol.2, Musée National d.Art Moderne, Centre National d.art et de Culture Georges 
Pompidou, Paris 1977, no.89, plate p.72. 

68 Henderson, [note 60], p.54. 

69 The first time Apollinaire takes up the concept of the fourth dimension is not, as everyone assumes, 
published in “Les soirées de Paris”, April/May 1912, see Henderson [note 60], p.44. 

70 Apollinaire in “Les soirées de Paris”, April/May 1912, cited in: Düchting [note 32], p. 168. 

71 Metzinger: “Maurice Princet often joined us. Although he was still very young, he had an important 
position in an insurance company, due to his knowledge of mathematics. But apart from his 
profession he considered mathematics in the artistic sense and structured straight lines as an 
aesthete in dimensions. He directed us to non-Euclidean geometry and pressed us hard to create 
geometry for painters. But that we could not do in the sense in which he... meant it.” Fritz Metzinger, 
1990 [note 2 ], pp. 183, 196. 

72 Maurice Raynal, “Conception et vision”, Gil Blas, Paris, 29.8.1912; cited in Fry [note 1}, p.103. 

73 According to Bergson's philosophy of life space is in itself homogenous and movement only the 
succession of the spatial position of the solids within it. The durée does not indicate time, only the 
change within the space. Time is by comparison not homogenous; it is one single indivisible flow, 
growth, completely different from the so-called time of the natural sciences. Space exists, time does 
not exist, it grows and grows. Assigned to space is the intellect whose object is solidity, spatiality and 
matter. Real time, pure duration of time the intellect is unable to grasp, since it transfers its 
corresponding forms of spatial matter over to time (segmentation, division of time into hours, minutes, 
seconds etc.). Pure duration of time can only be grasped intuitively. It is at any rate difficult for 
contemporary man to perceive the flow, the course, the organic nature of time. All reality is growth; 
there is basically only growth, action, initiative. Finally there are two kinds of movement: the rising one 
of life and the falling one of matter; see Hans Joachim Störig, “Weltgeschichte der Philosophie”, 
Stuttgart (note 4) 1985. 

74 Jean Metzinger: “...he [Picasso] sketched a free mobile perspective from which Maurice Princet has 
ingeniously constructed a complete geometry”. From: Jean Metzinger, “Note sur la peinture”, Pan, 
September 1910. 

75 Joachim Gasquet, “Paul Cézanne” Paris 1921; German translation Berlin 1948, p.131. 

76 Albert Einstein's “Theory of Relativity”, although already published in 1905, was scarcely a source 
for the Cubists. Only after an eclipse expedition in 1919 confirmed Einstein's theory, did it become 
known in wider circles (and also translated into French). In the early Twenties it interested Metzinger, 
Gleizes, Gris and Klee. 

77 Apart from the cyclist pictures granular surface structures are visible in Metzinger's Paysage of 
1911 and also appear after the war. In “Du cubisme” of 1912 Metzinger/Gleizes explain: “In the 
sculpturally formed low reliefs we want to be able to slip in those delicate transitions which suggest 
rather than define. Many forms must remain a suggestion whose actuality is only accomplished by the 
mind of the viewer.”Quoted from: Fry [note 1], p.114 

78 Geometric space is homogenous, as it is created equal in all directions; not, however, the space of 
sight and touch of unequal length in different directions, which is to be understood as a non-Euclidean 
shaped field of vision or as a field of vision within a cube. 

79 “The art of the new painters takes the infinite universe as ideal. Only the fourth dimension places at 
the artist.s disposal the new measure of perfection that allows him to give proportions to the object, as 
it corresponds to the degree of plasticity...” Raynal, 1913. 

80 Picasso recalls in a letter to Kahnweiler of June 1912 that on an earlier visit by Matisse and Leo 
Stein to his atelier the latter jokingly said of a work in progress (presumably 1908) “That is the fourth 
dimension!” See Rubin [note 52], pp.346, 376 and note 49), which makes clear that the concept was 
in circulation long before 1912. 

81 Rubin [note 52 ], p.49, note 3. 

82 Marcel Duchamp in: “Museum of Modern Art Bulletin”, 13, no.4/5, New York 1946. Also Cabanne 
[note 27], p.24f.k 52f., in which Duchamp tells of his experiments and jottings on the fourth dimension 
with reference to Pawlowski and his popular scientific articles. 

83 “Studio International”, yr. 171, no.878, London, June 1966. 

84 Cabanne [note 27 ], pp. 24, 53. 

85 Fritz Metzinger 1990 [note 2], p. 117. 

86 See exhibition catalogue Mannheim [note 64 ]. 

87 The concept of simultaneity appears for the first time in a futurist foreword to the futurist exhibition 
in Paris (afterwards in London, Berlin, Brussels etc.) that originates from passages of the technical 
manifesto of 1910 penned jointly by Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla and Severini and in February 
1912 even caused uproar amongst their cubist friends (I compagni di Francia”), since they were 
accused of “accademismo larvato”, of fossilization and immobility, of traditionalism, of Impressionism 
etc.; “noi cerchiamo uno stile del movimento, il che non fu mai tentao prima di noi” they shouted and 
demanded “simultaneità d.ambiente, e quindi dislocazione e smembramento degli oggetti, 
sparpagliamento e fusion dei dettagli, liberati dalla logica commune e indipendenti gli uni dagli altri.” 
[...] “bisogna che il quadro sia la sintesi di quello che se ricorda e di quello che si vede”. The 
“sensazione dinamica des trascendenzialismo fisico” (Boccioni) and the line of force “linee-forze” 
would have to form the new “pittura degli stati d.animo”, even if “caos e urto di ritmi assolutamente 
opposti” were necessary, to set up the “armonia nuova” (see De Maria [note 59], pp.59-63). 
Apollinaire was in the habit of excluding the concept of time from his field of vision and for that reason 
initially misunderstands the Futurists. His nationalism, his disparaging estimation of the Italians in 
“L.Intransigeant” and in “Le petit Bleu” of the 7th.and 9th. February 1912, on the occasion of the 
futurist exhibition in Paris is symptomatic of the climate of animosity of those years: “The most original 
aspect of the futurist school of painting is the search for a representation of movement in painting. 
That is a completely legitimate preoccupation. In so far as this problem can be solved at all by 
painterly means, the painters of France have already solved it.”(Apollinaire, “Le petit Bleu”, 9.2.1912). 

88 In the polemic between Boccioni and Delaunay each laid claim to the primacy of simultaneity for 
himself. Boccioni describes the origin of the concept of simultaneity in futuristic art in the succeeding 
manifestos of 1910-1912; indeed simultaneity is said to be the quintessential element of the futuristic 
program. At the first futurist exhibition on 5.2.1912 in the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery Marinetti read out 
Boccioni's lecture of 1911 on futurist painting in the presence of many French painters whereby 
Gleizes and Metzinger sided with the Futurists in a discussion that led to blows. 

89 See: Gabriele Hoffmann, Intuition, durée, simultanéité · Drei Begriffe der Philosophie Henri 
Bergsons und ihre Analogien im Kubismus von Braque und Picasso von 1910 bis 1912, in: Hannelore 
Paflik (publ.) “Das Phänomenon Zeit in Kunst und Wissenschaft” (Acta humaniora), Weinheim 1987, 
pp.39-64. 

90 “Die Aussteller an das Publikum” ,the exhibition by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, 
Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini (German translation from “Der Sturm”, Berlin 1912, 3rd yr., no.105, 
p.3ff.): “...we pursue another way, which is in many respects similar to Late Impressionists, 
Synthesists and Cubists, at whose head stand the masters Picasso, Braque, Derain, Metzinger, Le 
Fauconnier, Gleizes, Léger, Lhote and others. We admire the heroism of these important painters, 
who have proved to have a praiseworthy disdain of artistic money-making and a strong hatred of 
academicism, but we feel and expound that our art is opposed to theirs. Again and again they paint 
what is immovable, solidified and all the static conditions of nature; they honor the traditionalism of 
Poussin, Ingres and Corot, which makes their art old, turned to stone by the intractability of what is 
passé, something that we find incomprehensible. [...] to paint after a model that poses, is absurdity 
and spiritual cowardice, even if the model is translated into linear, spherical or cubist form on the 
canvas. [...] The immediacy of states of mind in our work of art: that is the intoxicating aim of our art. 
[...] immediacy of the atmosphere, hence alteration of place and dissection of solids, dispersion and 
interfusion of details that freed from continuous logic, are independent, one from the other. [...] We 
have not only radically abandoned the firmly balanced and therefore artificial motif but we are 
dissecting indiscriminately and suddenly each motif by one or several motifs, the whole development 
of which we never display, only its introduction, its middle and its end. [...] This is how we have 
achieved our pronouncement, from the running horse that has not four but twenty-four hooves”. 

91 Examples of simultaneous pictures are e.g.: Henri le Fauconnier, Le chasseur, 1911; Umberto 
Boccioni, Simultaneous Visions, 1911, and States of mind 1, The leave-taking, 1911; Gino Severini, 
La danseuse obsédante, 1911, Danzatrice in blu and Dynamic hieroglyphics, 1912; Marcel Duchamp 
Nude descending a staircase1,,1911 (sketch),and II,1912; Giacomo Balla, Dog on a lead and 
Violinist, 1912; Kasimir Malewitsch, The knife grinder, 1912; Lyonel Feininger, The cyclists, 1912; 
Jean Metzinger Danseuse au café, 1912. 

92 See exhibition catalogue Mannheim [note 64] p.164f., and, as mentioned, Marietta Mautner Markof, 
“Umberto Boccioni and the concepts of time in futuristic art 1910-1914”, pp.169-193. 

93 Dora Vallier,” Braque, la peinture et nous”, Cahiers d.Art, Paris, Oct. 1954, p.16. 

94 Michel Eugène Chevreul, “De la loi du contraste simultane des couleurs et de l.assortiment des 
objets colorés, considérés d.après cette lois..., Paris 1839. 

95 The picture has a mediatory function (union of nature and culture),is as depth of image also depth 
of color, and the movement of color stands as analogy of the depth of the universe that the light has 
to stride across to reach our eyes. Concerning the perception of color the viewer is to take part in the 
dynamic reality of light, as life energy. Man and universe are bound together by the movement of light. 
Color employed as a simultaneous contrast does not represent light but is light itself. The 
simultaneous contrasts are to make movement visible that leads from the picture plane into the depth 
of pictorial space. this movement of the colors is not “mechanically” constructed in the futurist sense 
by means of actions of movement or in the cubist by solids fractured by a system of facets but directly 
perceptible in the effect of the interaction of vibrating colors on the eye (see Hajo Düchting,” Robert 
Delaunays „Fenêtres": peinture pure et simultané · Paradigma einer modernen Wahrnehmungsform”, 
Munich 1982. 

96 Vallier [note 93 ] p.16. 

97 Rubin [note 52 ], see note 84, pp.33.53. 

98 Apollinaire [note 56 ], p.10, just: “Il faut pour cela [se donnant le spectacle de sa propre divinité...] 
embrasser d.un coup d.oeil: le passé, le présent et l.avenir.” 

99 Robbins 1985 [note 2], p.21, note 65, refers to Peter Brook in “Cubism 8” (Belfast, Spring 1985). 

100 Nevertheless he had as a thirty-year old attained an undreamt-of international regard and exhibited 
1912/1913 in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Budapest, Milwaukee and Berlin as well as shortly before the 
beginning of the war, in Prague, Brussels and New York. Almost at the same time as the group 
exhibition at Berthe Weil.s he sent exhibits to St. Petersburg and Riga. His paintings dealt at twice the 
price of one by Braque. In 1914 with the beginning of the First World War the fruitful period of rebirth 
in the arts came to a close. The artists were enlisted and had to interrupt their work for years. 
Friendships broke up, youthful enthusiasm was dampened by the horror or war and once vehemently 
held convictions lost their lustre under a different light. Although Metzinger was called up, he 
managed an exhibition in New York, and as early as 1916 was able to dedicate himself once more to 
painting. In comparison with other artists the war seems not to have left a fairly deep impression on 
Metzinger's art, except for the painting Soldier at the chessboard (1916) there is no reminder of it. If 
Metzinger also still dedicated himself in the early Twenties to Cubism and continued to be 
represented in the re-introduced exhibitions and Salons, the inventiveness and enthusiasm of a lively 
art scene as in the early 1910s was not to be revived. What is noticeable is that Metzinger slipped 
from the exemplar of a Gris to that of a Léger. Later he became an adherent of the German Neue 
Sachlichkeit. During the Second World War he moved to the little Mediterranean town of Bandol, 
where in addition to painting he wrote articles for the magazines “Profil Littéraire de la France” and 
“Les Facettes” as well as poetry, the publication of which (beyond the “Ecluses” of 1947) would be 
something to look forward to. In 1950 he was appointed to a three-year lectureship at the Académie 
Frochot in Paris and honoured three years later with the vice-presidency of the “Société des Artistes 
Indépendants”. He died in Paris in 1956. 

 
© C. Escow 10.09.2010