The present gouache is the final study for a large peinture à la colle on canvas executed the same year by Robert Delaunay now in the collection of

Here the artist is looking back on his original early ideas of
the combination of light, color and movement. He is more
specifically looking at the 1913-1914, Hommage à Blériot
(Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris) where in a more
complex composition he had already used the image of the propellor. Using, the airplane, a very new mode of transportation, Blériot was the first pilot to fly across the channel on July 25, 1909. Like the Italian Futurists, Delaunay was fascinated by modern life and its new technology.

Here the artist is showing us the distortion of light and colors
created by the very fast movement of a propellor which has been
reduced to a multi-colored curving form.