2. Artists & stock
3. Sonia Delaunay
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Sonia Delaunay was born to Gradshik (Ukraine, Russia) in 1885. Sara Ilinitchna Stern, said Sonia Stern, is adopted by his uncle Henri Terk in 1890. She saw regularly the Schmidt-Reuter’s studio in Karlsruhe from 1903 till 1904, then the Academy of the Palette in Paris where she settled down in 1905. She painted then portraits and bare Fauves. Her first personal exhibition is organized in 1908. After a first marriage, she married the painter Robert Delaunay in 1910 which she contemplated as a poet expressing himself with colors. She followed her husband on the roads of the abstraction, beginning a canvas cycle and drawings where pure colours became plans which engendered forms built by the depth of connections between colours. Sonia Delaunay attempted to transmit the movement and the light. From 1913, the artist was interested in creating colored fabrics.
The couple settled down in Madrid in 1914, then in Portugal in1915 (works on the subjects of the flamenco, the tango, etc.), and came back in Paris 5 years later. Sonia Delaunay, from 1913 till 1935, dedicated herself essentially to applied arts (pillows, waistcoats, dresses, lampshade, etc.). Also, she made bindings, covers and illustrations of books. Her "marriage" with the poetry of Blaise Cendrars (1913) for « La Prose du Transsibérien et la petite Jehanne de France » is considered as a masterpiece in the art of the book illustrated in the XX ° century. She opened a decoration shop (« Casa Sonia »), and then created, with the dressmaker Jacques Heim, the «simultaneous Shop» for the international Exhibition of the decorative arts (Paris, in 1925). The artist became a specialist in clothing art and in the influence of the painting on it.
In the 30s, the couple joined the group Abstraction-Creation which defended the not representational art. From 1935 till 1937, she came back to the painting and made wall panels. The International Exhibition of the arts and techniques (in 1937, Paris) was the occasion for the upholders of the total art to give a public dimension to the abstraction; the couple participated actively in the collective great adventure of the art in the street, encouraged by the Popular Front.
Robert Delaunay died in 1941, and Sonia retreated to Grasse till the end of the war. In 1946, she was a co-founder of the Salon of the New Realities and exhibited with the group concrete Art. The group Espace was also originated from her.
Always faithful to the pure colour, excited by the law of the simultaneous contrasts, she made series, created mosaics, stained glasses, carpets and tapestries, conceived decorations and costumes for the theater, illustrated books. If careers of Robert and Sonia Delaunay are inseparable, their respective work reflected their personalities.
Sonia Delaunay died in Paris in 1979.

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