PAINT/PRINT Brief: Process To Image Week 4. Day 4. Artist Research

Artist Research: Sonia Delaunay (b 1885 Ukraine – d 1975 France)

It was recommended that I look at Sonia Delaunay because of a similar linear quality. I knew Delaunay was an amazing artist and textile designer, and it was motivational to view all her colourful paintings and designs again. I am also influenced by geometric shapes and checkered patterns, painting a black and white triangle and square pattern on my ‘Found Object’ and creating a woven black and white paper checkerboard pattern (Figure 1. below).

**Figure 1.** **Black, White Paper Weaving By Cathy. 2021.**

Sonia Delaunay (nationality: French, Russian, Ukraine) was born in Ukraine, and trained in Russia and Germany. After moving to Paris, her art painting practice incorporated textile, fashion and set designs.

Quilt patterns were Delaunay’s initial passion, (I am also stimulated by patterns of craft arts such as quilts and weaving), and thus led her into textile design.

Sonia Delaunay’s Blanket. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/cubism-early-abstraction/orphism/a/sonia-delaunay

Fig 2. **Sonia Delaunay, Blanket, 1911, fabric, 109 x 81 cm (MNAM, Centre Pompidou)**

Fig 3. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/sonia-delaunay-geometric-fabric-design

Her paintings and prints were full of colour, shape and form, with bright, bold geometry. She was an important figure in abstract art in the beginning of the twentieth century, assimilating stylistic ideas from art movements such as Cubism, Fauvism and Futurism into her art.

Fig 4. Triptych 1963 Sonia Delaunay 1885-1979 Purchased 1966 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00817

Sonia (alongside her husband Robert Delaunay) pioneered an art style called Orphism or Simultaneism. Sonia displayed a natural ability to interconnect different combinations of colours. Her work has an exuberant, expressive quality, because there is a sense of flatness (pure abstraction of colour and shape) that gives a three-dimensional depth when joined together. Orphism relates to the connections between painting and music. Many 19^th and 20^th century artists such as Frantisek Kupka, Robert Delaunay (Sonia’s husband) and Sonia explored the analogy between music and art.

Fig 5. https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?work=70Prismes Electriques (Electric Prisms) 1913. Sonia Delaunay-Terk, MoMA.

A multi-disciplinary avant garde and abstract painter, Delaunay also created works in textile design, fashion and interior design, graphic art, collage and bookmaking.