Sonia Delaunay`s exhibition at the Tate Modern is the feast to the eye, she is immersing us into the powerful dynamics of colour from room 1 and is keeping us intrigued with the palette movement and her experimenting with art genres throughout show. “The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay” is far from boredom, amongst the works of art on display you will find paintings, textiles, fashion items, interior design and furnishing. It is incredible how versatile one artist can be and is hard to believe that all these works of art were produced by one talented female artist, who lived and created across the period of two World Wars.
Sonia Delaunay (1885 - 1979) was born in Odessa, Ukraine, as Sara Stern to Jewish parents. At the age of 7 she moved to St Petersburg with her well-off uncle who adopted her and gave her privileged education and cultural background. In 1904 Sonia attended the Art Academy in Karlsruhe, Germany, and two years later moved to Paris to continue her studies at the Académie de la Palette. In Paris Delaunay was very much influenced by the works of Paul Gauguin and Fauvism movement, therein even in the early stage of her professional career we can sense her devotion to powerful and pure colours. In her series of women portraits she skilfully uses bold vivid colours, she depicts her friends` characteristics by combining contrast hues with ease such as warm yellow/ochre and cool blue/emerald.
Delunay`s transition from impressionism style was very abrupt and she turns to abstraction and begins experimenting with simultanism. Sonia and her husband Robert Delaunay were pioneers in the study of “simultaneous contrast”, a phenomenon when the perception of colour changes depending on how you place colours next to each other. In Room 2 we can see the work that is considered to be Sonia`s first abstract work - a patchwork crib cover that she made for their child. Delaunays experimented with abstract styles such as fauvism, surrealism and cubism before developing their own unique style that was named 'orphism'. It is characterised by vibrant hues and geometric shapes that bring motion, rhythm and musical qualities to the artwork.
Sonia`s childhood memories of Ukraine remained with her throughout her career and she found her inspiration from ‘pure’ colour and bright costumes of the Ukrainian peasant weddings, this can be seen in her patchworks and fabric designs. Sonia used her signature simultanism technique not only in paintings, but also in interior decor and furniture, clothes and textile design, illustration for magazines and other publishers, collaboration with theatre productions and films.
While very often the great artists do not get acknowledged during their lifetime, have to create in poverty and would receive acclamation only post mortem, for instance like Vincent Van Gogh, this is not the case with Sonia Delaunay. Apart from her versatile talents she also had entrepreneurial spirit and was able to battle her financial crisis. In 1917 she collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev's theatre production of Cleopatra in Madrid and designed costumes for the set. This led to further commissions in Spain, prompting the artist to set up Casa Sonia, selling her designs for interior decoration and fashion from branches in Madrid and Bilbao. In 1923 she registered her own design business in France with orphism's simultané trademark. Sonia Delaunay`s contributions to the development of abstract art was recognised. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective at the Louvre, which took place in 1964.
The exhibition in Tate Modern is the first UK retrospective of an artist and for many it unveiled the name of Sonia Delaunay for the first time. If you have not seen the show yet, you still have a chance to discover Delaunay`s art and power of her colours, the show is closing on the 9th August 2015.
