Sonia Delaunay

Childhood

Sonia Delaunay was born under the name of Sarah Stern. The majority of the official biographies mention like goes back to birthday on November 14th, 1885, but in its Autobiographie published in 1978, it quotes the November 4th 1885. This dissension can be explained by the shift between the dates given by the calendar of the Russian Empire and those of the calendar géorgien.

In its autobiography, the first years of its life contain only few details. One learns there that she loved much her father from which she learned how never to complain and with being honest, whom she hated his mother, and that she had a younger brother.

In 1890, it left his/her parents and settled in a brother of its mother, Henri Terk, a lawyer rich and famous of Saint-Pétersbourg. It was not an official adoption: it kept its name of birth legally. Nevertheless, it took the name of Sonia Terk.

She lived in a house cossue, the Jewish traditions and an artistic medium and musical. She was educated by many controlling which taught several foreign languages to him. She kept a long time the memory of the avenues, places and gardens of Saint-Pétersbourg which one could see the academic tables in his uncle, as well as summers spent in a house of family in Finland. She travelled also much in Germany, Italy, France, exploring the treasures of the museums and galleries.

At 16 years, in the secondary school of Saint-Pétersbourg whom she attended, his professeure of art encouraged Sonia for its gifts in Dessin. She advised in Terks, with the sights of her talents, a school of art in Germany. Sonia was 18 years old when it took this advice and entered to the academy of art of Karlsruhe and worked the drawing. In 1905, it left to settle with Paris, convinced that the artistic center of the time was over there.

Paris and beginnings of its career

Arrived at Paris in 1905, she attended the Academy of the Pallet with Montparnasse, but deviated some, preferring to traverse the exposures and galleries. This year, one could discover there the Grandes Bathers Cézanne, as well as work of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard, Derain or Matisse. With the Living room of autumn, the art critic Vauxcelles named the Deer these paintings with the bright colors which were obviously not its taste. Sonia as for it, was very inspired by these artists, without to arrive to an original work.

It met a collector and German galerist, Wilhelm Uhde, eleven years its elder. They married on December 5th 1908. Although this union was a failure, it made it possible Sonia to be introduced into the artistic and literary elite of Paris. Moreover, it is in the gallery of Uhde that Sonia met for the first time a man of twenty-three years, candidate with being a painter and who was going soon to become its second husband, Robert Delaunay. It was beginning 1909.

Robert

Sonia and Robert became lovers in April 1909. Sonia divorced its first husband, and as it was pregnant of Robert, they did not wait to marry. The union was marked on November 15th, 1909 and on January 18th 1910 was born their son, Charles.

At the artistic level, during thirty years of common life, they worked in narrow association. They liked to exchange their ideas, their points of view, and to nourish of their talents one and the other.

Both were fascinated by research on the color of Eugene Chevreul, chemist of the 19th century which published in 1839 its theory on the relations between the colors in Of the law of the simultaneous contrast of the colors . Just like Delacroix and the Impressionist, Robert Delaunay was inspired some much to paint. Sonia, as for it, used the colors in a more instinctive way.

They found in 1911 a pictorial movement, the orphism. Unhappy name given by their friend Guillaume Apollinaire, who not including/understanding what he saw, like so many experts and professors, returned a little more complicated one movement determining of the art of the 20th century. This movement is characterized by the use of bright colors and the geometrical forms. Its work applies to painting, textile manufacture, ceramics…

Work of Sonia

Sonia refused the too clear distinction between the Beautiful arts and art decorative or applied. Not only it painted paintings, but it manufactured also objects of decoration (cushions, lamp-shades, boxes), or created made clothing of geometrical forms of bright colors and varied matters. One could have believed that these vestimentary creations were inspired by the Cubisme. Actually, they were rather marked by the memory of completed work by a Russian country-woman.

Friendships with other artists

In Paris, Delaunay opened their apartment with their friends painters or poets. Sonia Delaunay bound in particular friendship with Blaise Cendrars. It was the first artist to illustrate his poems with paintings. In 1913, they publish a “ together; poem affiche ” the Prose of Trans-Siberian and Small Jehanne de France . It acts without question of one of the most famous illustrated books of the 20th century with Jazz of Matisse.

Notoriety

Sonia Delaunay was the first woman to have had, of alive sound, a retrospective with the Musée of Louvre (1964). It was named Officer of the Legion of Honor (1975). The national museum of modern art of Paris, the Center Georges-Pompidou has the majority of his work. Two thousand works there were already scannées and indexed. It is about the first attempt intended to make known the extent of the work of this artist who took part in the determining movements of 20th century (abstraction, not figuration, hobby-horse, circles and squares, etc).

External bonds

Biography on the site france-ukraine.com
Site of the Meeting of the national museums. To click on " Recherche" , then to write the name of the artist in " Seek simple".

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