In Paris, two free exhibitions pay tribute to the total art of Sonia Delaunay, pioneer of abstraction

Wife of the artist Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) whom she married in 1910, Sonia Delaunay had to wait to achieve recognition long eclipsed by the shadow of her husband. United in creation as in life, the Delaunay couple developed in the 1910s the principles of simultaneism, a concept of abstract art based on the interaction of colors to which Sonia remained faithful throughout her life, until upon his death in 1979. A double exhibition in Paris immerses us in his total art.

The colorful rhythms of Sonia Delaunay

Known for its work on the avant-gardes of the 20th century, the Zlotowski Gallery has patiently brought together a very beautiful collection of works by Sonia Delaunay spanning the artist’s entire long career. Testifying to exile in Portugal during the First World War, Market in Minho (1917) is an excellent example of the simultaneism that Sonia practices as brilliantly as her husband, figurative elements still emerging from the large colored circles.

Market in Minho, 1917, watercolor on paper, 36 x 25.5 cm © Pracusa

Known for her textile production, Sonia developed this branch of her activity in particular from 1917 when, following the Russian Revolution, she lost the income from her rents in Russia. Artist, wife and mother, she is the one who keeps the pot boiling, multiplying projects and daring creations where she applies simultaneism to the world of fashion. A set of drawings gives an overview of this production, Sonia receiving her clients on Boulevard Malherbes at Maison Sonia, a sort of concept store avant la lettre.

View of the exhibition “Sonia Delaunay, la Simultanée” at the Zlotowski gallery © Yosuke Kojima

A very beautiful set of gouaches on paper also testifies to the permanence of his abstract plastic research. She created her “colorful rhythms” as she called them until her last breath, as illustrated here in a work produced a few months before her death.

Sonia Delaunay, Project for a work on Robert Delaunay, 1957, gouache on tracing paper taped to paper, 24 x 33.2 cm. © Pracusa

Delaunay, Cendrars, Dutronc, Hardy…

The exhibition continues a little further down rue de Seine, at the Galerie Roger-Viollet. An impressive mosaic designed in 1954 and of which edition n°3 of 2002 appears here shows the extent of the production of a resolutely jack of all trades artist as further demonstrated by a tapestry project (1940-1942) with a colorful range very subtle or amusing studies for a game of cards (1959). Specializing in photography, the Roger-Viollet Gallery has unearthed period images from its rich archives.

Jacqueline Chaumont, French dancer, in the Pierrot Éclair costume designed by Sonia Delaunay for the film “Le P’tit Par” © Galerie Roger-Viollet

There are portraits of close friends of Sonia Delaunay such as the poet Blaise Cendrars or the Dadaist Tristan Tzara but also interesting photos like those from the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life in 1937 where Sonia creates a large fresco. Finally, a nostalgia sequence, a film from the INA archives shows Jacques Dutronc interviewing Sonia Delaunay in 1968 for the television show “Quatre temps”. The scene takes place at the 20th century gallery where Sonia is presenting a monographic exhibition. Most moving, the sequence where Françoise Hardy wanders singing through the exhibition dressed in a Sonia Delaunay dress is the most delicious conclusion.