French painter and designer of Ukrainian origin, co-founder with her husband Robert Delaunay of the Orphism movement. She applied colorful abstraction to painting as well as to the applied arts (fashion, textiles, design), erasing the boundary between fine art and decorative art.
Sonia Delaunay(1885 — 1979)
Sonia Delaunay
France, Empire russe
6 min read
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Color is the skin of the world.»
Key Facts
- Born in 1885 in Gradizhsk (Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire) and died in 1979 in Paris.
- Married Robert Delaunay in 1910 and developed with him Orphism and “Simultanism,” based on color contrasts.
- Created in 1913 “Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France” with Blaise Cendrars, a book-object with simultaneous colors.
- Extended abstraction to design: fabrics, fashion, sets and bookbindings in the 1920s.
- In 1964, became the first living woman artist to be exhibited at the Louvre Museum.
Works & Achievements
Assemblage of colorful fabrics that opens her exploration of abstract color and the dissolving of the boundary between art and craft.
Large canvas translating the rhythm and movement of dancers into color, a manifesto of Orphism.
The first “simultaneous book,” created with Blaise Cendrars, fusing poetry and painting on a two-meter foldout.
Canvas celebrating the electric lighting of Parisian boulevards through disks of shattered color.
Fashion and fabric pavilion presented in Paris, the high point of her influence on Art Deco.
Vast murals on aviation and electricity created for the pavilions, with Robert Delaunay.
Late series of abstract compositions extending her research into contrasts and colored movement.
Anecdotes
In 1911, when her son Charles was born, Sonia Delaunay sewed a cradle blanket by piecing together scraps of colored fabric, in the manner of the Ukrainian peasant quilts of her childhood. Looking at it, she realized that this arrangement of colors resembled a Cubist work: this everyday object became the starting point for all her abstract research.
Around 1913, Sonia strolled through Paris dressed in her “simultaneous dresses,” made of patchworks of bright colors. The poet Blaise Cendrars and his friend Apollinaire described these outfits in their writings, and the Delaunay couple caused a sensation at the Bal Bullier, turning dance into a living demonstration of their theories on color.
In 1913, she created *La Prose du Transsibérien* with Blaise Cendrars, a book-object that unfolded to over two meters in height, where her colors accompanied the poem. The artists announced that they wanted to join all 150 copies end to end to reach the height of the Eiffel Tower.
During the First World War, having taken refuge in Portugal and then Spain, the Delaunay family lost the income from its Russian properties after the 1917 revolution. Sonia then turned her art into a livelihood: she opened a decoration shop in Madrid, the “Casa Sonia,” and dressed wealthy clients.
In 1964, Sonia Delaunay became the first living woman artist to have her works exhibited at the Louvre, thanks to a donation she made together with her son. A belated recognition for a creator who had long remained in the shadow of her husband Robert.
Primary Sources
Around 1911 I had the idea of making a blanket for my son, who had just been born, composed of scraps of fabric like those I had seen among Russian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces made me think of Cubist conceptions.
In those days I was in my adolescence / I was barely sixteen and could already no longer remember my childhood / I was 16,000 leagues from my birthplace.
The simultaneism of this art reveals itself through simultaneous contrast and through all the magnitudes born of contrasts... and which thus constitute the very reality of depth.
There is no difference between painting and what are called the decorative arts: for me, colour obeys the same laws, whether it is on a canvas or on a fabric.
Key Places
Small town in the Russian Empire where Sarah Stern was born in 1885. The peasant colors and textiles of the region would leave a lasting mark on her eye.
City where, taken in by her uncle, she grew up in a cultured environment and discovered museums and European painting.
Capital of the avant-gardes where she settled in 1905, developed Orphism with Robert Delaunay, and spent most of her career.
A refuge during the First World War, where she opened the “Casa Sonia” and launched her decoration and fashion business.
The site of her crowning achievement: in 1964 she became the first living woman artist exhibited there, thanks to her donation.
