| To our shame, Sonia Delaunay hadn't really registered on our art radar until this massive exhibition (July '15). A Russian Jewess from Odessa (b 1895) she spanned most of the twentieth century (d 1979). She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective at the Louvre. Her modern art moved into greater abstraction, and with her second husband Robert Delaunay she developed 'simultanism' based on the effect of adjacent colours on our perception of them. She was a pioneer of bright colours and abstraction known as 'orphism'. She later moved into more commercial activities when funds from her family dried up after the Russian revolution. She opened high-end fashion shops in Spain selling clothes as well as art, and did work for Vogue, fabric design (her creations are still available at Liberty), advertising, theatre, even furniture. She loved tango and flamenco and depicted the movement of dance, in a way similar to Futurism. As ever, she was influenced by, and influenced, others. We could see echoes of her work in that by Terry Frost, and Bridget Riley, for example. A sprawling and enthralling exhibition. | |
