After Sonia Terk Delaunay (1885-1979) French, Framed Mixed Media. Geometric spirals and circles in numerous colors. Signed lower right. 

Overall: 21 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. 

Sight: 14 1/2 x 10 1/4 in.

#3473 . 

Sonia Terk Delaunay was born Sofia Ilinitchna Stern on November 14th, 1885 in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Her parents were poor Jewish workers, and her father died in a riot at the nail factory where he was a foreman when she was five. Sonia was sent to live with her uncle, Henri Terk, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, who officially adopted her a year later. She spent much of her youth traveling with him in Finland and across Europe, visiting numerous art museums and galleries. When she was 18 she went to Germany to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. In 1905 she moved to Paris, which would become her adopted home city for most of her life. She enrolled in the Académie de La Palette in Montparnasse, but was unhappy with their mode of teaching, spending most of her time in galleries instead. Strongly influenced by post-impressionist art of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and the Fauves, she eventually entered into a marriage of convenience with a German art dealer and gallery owner named Wilhelm Uhde in 1908 to get her work exhibited and gain access to a dowry from Henri. Comtesse de Rose, mother of Robert Delaunay, was a regular visitor to Uhde’s gallery, and Sonia first met him through her in early 1909. They became lovers in April of that year, and she and Uhde amicably divorced in August 1910. She married Robert three months later and gave birth to their son Charles two months after that. Through Robert she became intimately entwined with the School of Paris artists, and while making a blanket for her baby she became intrigued by the cubist designs that organically arose from her work, making her shift away from perspective and naturalism in her public art. Her work in modern design, including the concept of geometric abstraction and the integration of furniture, fabric, and clothing into art, led her to co-found the Orphism movement with Robert. Evolving concurrently with cubist offshoots like Georges Seurat’s Pointillism, they first dubbed their experiments Simultanéisme, and when Sonia met the poet Blaise Cendrars in 1912 they collaborated on books of poetry that utilized mixed media images. She, Robert, and Charles spent World War I in Spain and Portugal, and the Russian Revolution ended the financial support from Henri. Upon their return to Paris she began to make costumes for theatrical productions to make ends meet, which eventually led her to become a highly sought designer of exclusive clothing for private clients. In 1924 she opened a fashion studio together with Jacques Heim, and had a pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. After the Great Depression began her business closed, and when Robert died of cancer in 1941 she became withdrawn from public life. However, in 1964 her work was presented in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, making her the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre. In 1975 Sonia was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor, and spent her remaining years developing new ranges of tableware and jewelry as well as lecturing on the influence of painting on fashion. She died on December 5th, 1979 and was buried next to her husband in Gambais.

Good.