sonia delaunay // biography (1885–1979) / gallery / prints

/Biog./

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Sonia Delaunay
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//BIOG.//
SONIA DELAUNAY

Known as: Ukrainian Painter

Date of birth: 1885 (Odessa, Ukraine)

Birthname: Sonia Terk

Also Known as: Sonia Delaunay-Terk

Date of death: 1979 (Paris, France)

Sonia Delaunay was five when she moved to St. Petersburg to live with her uncle. She went to Paris in 1905, where she was influenced by Gaughin. She married Robert Delaunay in 1910, after having been married to the German art critic Uhde.

She seems to have painted pure abstractions before her husband, but some of her best work was done long after his death.

Like her husband, she painted a huge mural for the Paris Exposition of 1937.

There are 523 of her designs in the Musee des Tissus at Lyons, and other works are in Grenoble and Lyons.

Their joint writings on art were published in New York as The New Art of Colour in 1978.

Trivia:

With her husband she founded the movement Orphism in 1911, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes.
Met her husband in 1908.
The couple had a son.
She was born into a Jewish family.
Moved to Madrid in 1914, and between 1915 and '16 was in Portugal.
In 1924 she opened a fashion studio together with Jacques Heim.
She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964.
Named an officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1975, four years before her death.
Delaunay's painting Coccinelle was featured on a stamp jointly released by the French Post Office, La Poste and the United Kingdom's Royal Mail in 2004 to commemorate the centenary of Entente Cordiale.