Sonia Delaunay
France, 1885 - 1979
(b Gradizhsk, Ukraine, 14 Nov 1885; d Paris, 5 Dec 1979).
Russian painter, designer and printmaker of Ukrainian birth, active in France, wife of (1) Robert Delaunay. She was the youngest of three children and in 1890 was adopted by her maternal uncle, Henri Terk, a lawyer in St Petersburg, where she spent her youth. She had early contacts with Germany, visiting the artist Max Liebermann in Berlin (1899) and studying drawing with Ludwig Schmidt-Reutter (1863–1909) in Karlsruhe from 1903 to 1905. In 1905 she moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Palette. There she met Amédée Ozenfant, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Jean-Louis Boussingault. She learnt printmaking from Rudolf Grossmann (1882–1941). Her early painting was figurative, with frequent references to van Gogh, Gauguin and the Fauves. The links with Germany continued after her move to France: she exhibited at the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, in 1913 and again at the Galerie Der Sturm in 1920 and 1921.
In order to remain in Paris she contracted a marriage of convenience in 1908 with Wilhelm Uhde, a German art critic and dealer. Her first solo exhibition was held that year at Uhde’s Galerie Notre Dame des Champs, and through him she met many painters, including Picasso, Braque, Maurice de Vlaminck and Robert Delaunay. In 1910 she and Uhde were amicably divorced, and she married Delaunay; she used the name Sonia Delaunay-Terk until the mid-1920s.
Together the Delaunays pursued the study of colour, influenced by the theories of Michel-Eugène Chevreul. They adopted the stylistic label ‘simultaneity’ in order to distinguish their work, and in 1912 Sonia began her series of non-figurative Contrastes simultanés (e.g. 1912; Paris, Pompidou; see fig.). She was already active as a designer of embroideries and bookbindings: her best-known book collaboration was with Blaise Cendrars, for whose La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (published in October 1913 in the form of a vertical scroll almost 2 m long) she designed a cover and pochoir illustrations.
After the loss of her private income in 1917 as a result of the Russian Revolution, Sonia expanded her design practice, first with the Casa Sonia in Madrid (where the Delaunays spent part of World War I) and then with her Atelier Simultané in Paris, producing textiles, clothing and interior design. Her Boutique Simultanée, run in conjunction with the couturier Jacques Heim, at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (Paris, 1925), established her reputation as a designer of ‘modern’ fashions. Her work was also commissioned for the stage and cinema, the latter including Le Somptier’s Le P’tit Parigot and Marcel l’Herbier’s Vertige (both 1926).
During the 1930s she and Robert Delaunay became preoccupied with public art and with projects for neon advertising. Both artists painted large-scale murals for the Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1937), where Sonia worked in the pavilions of air and rail transport. The Delaunays were energetic promoters of abstract art: they joined the Abstraction–Création group in 1931 and were founder-members of Réalités Nouvelles (1939).
After her husband’s death in 1941, Sonia Delaunay remained active in her support for abstract art, as well as promoting Robert’s reputation by securing numerous exhibitions of his work and making bequests of their work to public institutions. In 1964 her gift of works to the Louvre was exhibited as the Donation Delaunay, and she was thus the first woman to receive an exhibition in the Louvre. Her continuing practice as an artist, designer and printmaker received wide recognition in France and internationally. She exhibited extensively and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1975. From 1977 many of her designs were reissued in limited editions.
WRITINGS
Tissus et tapis (Paris, 1929)
Compositions, couleurs, idées (Paris, 1930)
Nous irons jusqu’au soleil (Paris, 1978) [autobiography]
--TAG GRONBERG
Person TypeIndividual
United States of America (USA), 1912 - 1999
