Saturday, July 25, 2020

Sonia Delaunay, Artist


An important figure in the Parisian avant-garde, Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) brought extraordinary inventiveness to a range of works, which celebrated the modern age in all its guises. Over a 60-year period she created groundbreaking paintings, textiles and clothes, as well as collaborating with poets, choreographers and manufacturers.

wearing the Pierrot-Éclair costume designed by Sonia Delaunay, on the set of René Le Somptier’s film Le P’tit Parigot 1926
© Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Above text and image source:
Tate UK








The 1920s sketches are all that survive of these garments, for which she drew on the work of avant-garde poets such as Tristan Tzara, Vicente Huidobro, and Joseph Delteil to create ‘poems in motion’. These elegant dress designs feature her characteristically bold, graphic shapes – zig-zags, diamonds, circles, and lines – incorporated with painted words. The lettering is read across sleeves, waistlines, hems, and other seams and structural features of the garments, drawing the whole of the female body into an intensely visual and mobile expression of simultaneity.
Above image and text source:
Centre for Material Texts, Lucy Razzall

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