Sonia Delaunay and her powerful colours

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.

Last chance to see “Post Pop: East Meets West”

Don`t miss your last chance to see “Post Pop: East Meets West” exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London, which is on display until the 3rd of March 2015. The show brings together 250 artworks by 110 masters from three important world regions: Far East (China and Taiwan), former Soviet Union and the West represented by British and US artists.  Post Pop: East Meets West is dedicated to the profound art movement that is Pop Art and its influences on modern art across the world. Although the exhibition features artworks from parts of the world that seem to be so different in their social and ethical behaviour, ideology, belief and views on life, it unveils familiar subjects of consumerism, mass productions and media and how they intersect with contemporary art. Art objects from different zones and time frames - pop art from 1970s and up to date - are displayed hand in hand in no particular order.

The works are rather split and presented in six main topics: Habitat; Advertising and Consumerism; Celebrity and Mass Media, Religion and Ideology, Sex and the Body. Mass produced objects and goods that are used in everyday life have always fascinated the artists and contributed to pop and contemporary art movements. The exhibition starts with the Habitat section, in the first room is Ai Weiwei`s marble sculpture of an armchair along the Vladimir Kozin` s (Ukrainian born artist) installations “Lock” and “The Toilet”. While the works are very different in its textures and aesthetics - a white and glamorous armchair opposed to the rough and grounded sculpture of toilet made of rubber and wire - they are both examples of commodities that serve human`s everyday needs that are not always so attractive.

As you move to another room you will find installations by a couple of ethnic Ukrainian artists, Iliya & Emilia Kabakov, a husband and wife who work together. Floating saucepans and bowls look like a still shot from a movie scene in an “Incident in the Corridor near the Kitchen” composition,  whilst “Unfinished Installation” leaves us wondering what was planned to be built with all these chaotically scattered tools, crates, jars, ropes and paint. The artist makes us think about the timeline of events, what preceded the incident and where will it lead us from the point we are at now.

From Habitat the exhibition progresses towards Advertising & Consumerism and Ideology & Religion sections.  The show touches on the subjects of mass media influences on the nature of the modern world, our taste and fashion choice being guided by the advertisement. While pop art in the western world has been affected by the mass production, consumerism and cult of celebrity; Political-Pop and iconography of Social Realism prevails in China and artists from the Soviet Union draw attention to the state control, similarity and pomp ceremony.

There are works of a few other Ukrainian artists or those of Ukrainian ethnicity on display. Mosaic sculptures by Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova from her collection of “Diamonds” fall within the Advertising and Consumerism category. Controversial artist Oleg Kulik, famous for his performances as a dog, presents his works from hise series “Museum of Nature”, photography “Horses of Bretagne”, video installation “Deep into Russia” and “I bite America and America bites me” c-print.  Inspection Medical Hermeneutics group (the members are Sergei Anufriev, Yuri Leiderman, Vladimir Fedorov who come from Ukraine and Pavel Pepperstein from Russia) exhibits carved Matryoshkas and prints from the series “Empty Icons”. Post Pop: East Meets West is a retrospective of pop art legacy, one may find its scale tiring and over the top, however if you are a frequent visitor of the Saatchi Gallery this will not catch you off-guard.