Sonia Delaunay was a key figure in the Parisian avant-garde of the interwar years. Born to a Jewish Ukrainian family and raised in Saint Petersburg, at the age of eighteen Delaunay enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1905 she relocated to Paris, where Post-Impressionism and Cubism were dominant in the city’s galleries. In this highly experimental climate, Delaunay and her husband Robert pioneered Simultanism, a style of abstract painting that emphasises the transcendental effects of the interaction between colours. The works on paper included here exemplify Delaunay’s application of the principles of painterly abstraction to textile patterns. Seeking compositions that could be realised in loom-woven thread, Delaunay experimented with the rhythm, motion, and depth created by simultaneous contrast, where colours appear different depending on those around them. Senza titolo (Gouache no. 1230) (1930) displays her trademark use of concentric circles and offset tones to create a sense of chromatic dynamism. She conceived of painterly forms as units of chromatic information – not unlike pixels in a digital image – whose vibrancy and intermingling are as material as they are optical. Across her oeuvre, colour – as Delaunay once described it, “the skin of the world” – was a consistent source of inspiration.
Ian Wallace
