Sonia Delaunay Exhibition 2017

On her death in 1979, at the grand old age of 94, Sonia Delaunay left behind her an extraordinary artistic legacy. She had, as she said during her lifetime, ‘lived’ her art; a claim she could make more convincingly than any other artist of the 20th century. Like Kandinsky, whom she had translated as a student, she was the cofounder of a major avant-garde movement – the poetically named Orphism – and saw in art the basis of a universal language.

Her astonishing manipulation of colour was grounded in ocular science and her own aesthetic theories. But, more importantly, Delaunay would transcend the theoretical; in addition to producing some of the most important nonfigurative art of her generation, she designed costumes for the theatre and haute couture fashion. Her rhythmic circles and squares spilled from canvas onto textiles, furniture, film sets and fast cars. Art and colour infiltrated every corner of her life, from the poems and paintings that decorated her apartment walls to the coats and dresses she paraded in the streets of Paris.