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Lot Essay
Sonia Delaunay focused on the study of forms in movement throughout her career. Rejecting the Cubist preference for flat planes and austere color, she strove to convey the impression of simultaneous movement and to conjure up rhythms through the manipulation of coloristic effects. Inspired by the principals of the perception of color first put forth by Eugène Chevreul's treatise De la couleur et de l'assortiment des objects colores consideres d'apres cette loi (1839), she used powerful, luminous color in her oeuvre. In the work Rythme couleur, no. 876 Delaunay interplays cold and warm tones to achieve remarkable depth and intensity. Speaking about her approach to painting she said, "Just as in written poetry, that which counts is not the mere juxtaposition of words but the act of creation mysteriously provoking (or not provoking) emotion; so in colors, what counts is the poetry, the mysterious inner vitality-- emanation and communicating. At last we have hopes of a new language" (quoted in ibid, p. 276).
Born in Russia, Sonia Delaunay moved to Paris in 1905 and later married the French painter Robert Delaunay. The two artists supported each other in the investigation of "simultaneity" in painting and collaborated on projects such as the costumes and scenery for Diaghilev's Cléopâtre. In his own account of his wife's contribution to the 1924 Salon d'Automne Robert Delaunay wrote, "We find in Madame Sonia Delaunay a projection of the inner self. She has linked this poetry of color in manifold rhythms, multiplied fivefold by varying 'simultaneous' speeds--by this we mean rhythms controlled by her own masterly intuition" (quoted in op. cit., pp. 274-275). Their work together was cut short by Robert's death in 1941 but Sonia continued in her pioneering exploration. She was the first woman to receive an exhibition in the Louvre and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur from the French government in 1975. It is extremely rare that her oils appear at auction in America.
Born in Russia, Sonia Delaunay moved to Paris in 1905 and later married the French painter Robert Delaunay. The two artists supported each other in the investigation of "simultaneity" in painting and collaborated on projects such as the costumes and scenery for Diaghilev's Cléopâtre. In his own account of his wife's contribution to the 1924 Salon d'Automne Robert Delaunay wrote, "We find in Madame Sonia Delaunay a projection of the inner self. She has linked this poetry of color in manifold rhythms, multiplied fivefold by varying 'simultaneous' speeds--by this we mean rhythms controlled by her own masterly intuition" (quoted in op. cit., pp. 274-275). Their work together was cut short by Robert's death in 1941 but Sonia continued in her pioneering exploration. She was the first woman to receive an exhibition in the Louvre and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur from the French government in 1975. It is extremely rare that her oils appear at auction in America.