Sonia Delaunay - Tate Modern

Sonia Delaunay, Propeller (Air Pavilion), 1937
(Detail – click on image to see whole picture; see, also, installation shot below)

Sonia Delaunay is at Tate Modern until 9 August 2015.
Sonia Delaunay arrived in Paris, aged 20, in 1905 (from Ukraine, via St Petersburg and Germany). She absorbed the avant-garde currents of the moment, including the wild colour of Van Gogh and the Fauves (1904-8), the formal radicalism of Cubism (1908-14) and the Futurists’ romance with speed and technology (launched in Paris, 1909).

Along with her husband Robert she developed a strain of Cubism which emphasised colour (in contrast to the muted tones of Braque and Picasso) and was named Orphism by Guillaume Apollinaire. Drawing on the colour theory of Eugène Chevreul, who identified the phenomenon of simultaneous contrast, the Delaunays developed a purely abstract art which dispensed with form in favour of rhythmic patterns of vibrant colour: Simultanism.

Sonia Delaunay moved easily between mediums and is notable for remarkable work in painting, collage, book binding, textile design, applied design and fashion. Although the chauvinism of the history of art has generally only acknowledged her as a footnote to accounts of her husband Robert, this exhibition will show that, in fact, Sonia was one of the key figures in one of the key periods of European Modernism

Read reviews and features by Adrian Searle, Laura Cumming, Kathleen Jamie, Alastair Smart, Karen Wright, Lara Prendergast, Ben Luke; read interviews with Juliet Bingham, curator of the exhibition: All You Need to Konw About Sonia Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay - Planes, Prints and Automobiles.
Click on images to enlarge.

Sonia Delaunay, Yellow Nude, 1908

Sonia Delaunay, Electric Prisms, 1913

Sonia Delaunay, Simultaneous Dresses (The Three Women), 1925

Sonia Delaunay, Rhythm Colour no. 1076, 1939

Sonia Delaunay, Simultane Playing Cards, 1964

Sonia Delaunay, Syncopated Rythmn, 1967

Installation view showing 2 of the Air Pavilion murals, 1937

Installation view

Installation view

Sonia Delaunay, clothes and matching Citroen B12, 1925
Two models wearing fur coat designed by Sonia Delaunay and manufactured by Heim, with the car belonging to the journalist Kaplan and painted after one of Sonia Delaunay’s fabrics, in front of the Pavillon du Tourisme designed by Mallet-Stevens, International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, Paris 1925 

Sonia Delaunay, paint scheme on Matra 530A, 1968