Arazzo tessuto a mano
Period: 1950
Dimensions: cm 171,5 x 143
Signed Sonia Delaunay
Ateliers Pinton – France
Sonia Delaunay tapestry – 388
Description
Sonia Delaunay tapestry
(Odessa, November 14, 1885 – Paris, December 5, 1979)
“Ville de Paris” – n° 2/6
Arazzo tessuto a mano
Period: 1950
Dimensions: cm 171,5 x 143
Signed Sonia Delaunay
Ateliers Pinton – France
Sonia Terk initially studied in St. Petersburg, before going to art school in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1903. In 1906 she moved to Paris, where she painted works inspired by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, and married the painter Robert Delaunay in 1910.
Already leaning towards a painting style focused on pure colour, Sonia assisted her husband with his research into colour and the refraction of light, concluding that dynamic effects are expressed by nothing more than modulations of light and colour, which generate a lyrical tone. This spawned the movement named Orphism (or Orphic Cubism), after Orpheus, a legendary musician associated with Greek mythology.
In the inter-war years, she pioneered the design of abstract clothing and assisted her husband with a series of major decorations for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition. Her uncontested dominance, however, lay in the art of tapestry and textile design, which she totally reinvented by replacing traditional decorations with geometric patterns in strikingly intense colours, like those used in her paintings.
Sonia Terk Delaunay died in Paris on 5 December 1979.
The “Ateliers Pinton” manufactory, founded in Felletin, France, in 1867, was one of the first exponents of low-loom tapestry-weaving, and worked with many of the greatest artists of the 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Le Corbusier, Victor Vasarely and Joan Mirò.
