Saturday, December 10, 2011

Sonia Delaunay Again


A while back I offered a small tribute here (and again here) to one of the great painters and designers of the 20th century, Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) who continues to be seriously under-appreciated, even though she was "the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre, in 1964."






Today I came across a collection here of new and unfamiliar images by both Sonia and her husband Robert Delaunay (samples of his work are below). At the start, they formed their graphic style together just before the First World War – their own version of Cubism, called "Orphism" by their friend Guillaume Apollinaire. So I amused myself, as the cold dark foggy evening established itself before the afternoon was even over, with these remote bright visions.





This last overhead view of the Eiffel Tower hints at the "machine-age" aspect of Robert's aesthetic – which Sonia (to her credit) appears not to have shared at all.