Artist's Biography
Sonia Delaunay (1885 -1979):
Born in Russia, 1885, Delauney moved to Paris in 1905 to study at the Academie de la Palette. She was married to Robert Delaunay in 1910. The couple developed Orphism, a movement which applied a new sense of lyricism to the Cubism of Picasso, Braque and the like. She began working on her first Simultaneous Contrasts in 1912.
During the 1920s she designed hand-printed fabrics and tapestries which won her great acclaim. In 1925 she participated in the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts working in collaboration with the couturier Jacques Heim. During the Depression in the 1930s she returned to painting and became a member of the Abstraction-Creation association, a group of artists who worked from geometrical, non-representational elements as opposed to those with natural appearances. Following the death of her husband she continued to forge a successful career.
Sonia Delaunay enjoyed a strong reputation as one of the finest designers working in her day. She designed clothing for the world's most glamorous women and for the finest theatrical productions. In 1963, having donated 58 of her works and 40 of her husband's to the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, she became the first living woman ever to be exhibited in a retrospective at the Louvre.
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