SONIA DELAUNAY LITHOGRAPH, 1969

18 1/4" W x 21 1/4" H

Edition 32/100. Signed, dated and editioned in pencil on print recto.

Born in the Ukraine in 1885, raised in St. Petersburg, studied drawing at Karlsruhe underSchmidt-Reutter Delaunay came to Paris in 1905 to be close to avant-garde circles. Her early work was influenced by the Fauves. Her first show was in 1908; she married Robert Delaunay in 1910 and did not exhibit her paintings again in any number until 1953.

The Delaunays were closely associated with Orphism, an offshoot of Cubism. More specifically, the Delaunays practiced Simultanism. The name comes from the work of French scientist Michel Eugène Chevreul who identified the phenomenon of ‘simultaneous contrast’, in which colours look different depending on the colours around them. Part of the radical drive to purify and elevate art through abstraction, she worked continually throughout her long life in many artistic media — painting, collage, bookbinding, book illustration, and eventually costume, theatre and fashion design and decorative arts.