Increasingly drawn to abstract art, Delaunay created the Salon des réalités nouvelles (New realities salon) in 1946, to promote abstract art. The movement was innovative and did not reflect any trend at that time.
This technique would later be coined as Orphism by the famous poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire, though Sonia preferred the term “Simultaneous contrast”. Together, they created and developed the Simultaneous technique, playing with color contrasts and dynamics, mixing cubism and futurism together. The Delaunay couple’s style changed radically at the beginning of the 1910s. The artist’s portraits often detach themselves from a colorful background, reminiscent of Matisse’s oeuvre. Depicting her summer vacations as a child in Les Finlandaises or her Yellow Nude artwork perfectly illustrate her technique. During this Fauvist period and inspired by Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin, Delaunay explored the interaction of color in her artworks. There, she discovered Fauvism and Post-Impressionism for the first time, which inspired her to develop her vision of nonobjective art. At 20 years old, she left to join the Académie de la Palette in Paris. She had little formal training in fine art, only having two years of attendance at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. Sonia Delaunay was born on November 14th, 1885 in Grandizhsk, Ukraine. The Roaring Twenties was marked by the blossoming the abstract movement and was the famous couple’s most creative period. Her husband Robert Delaunay used a simple and universal style in his abstract works, meanwhile Sonia preferred using color and various formats to explore abstraction. Through painting, mosaic, and tapestry, the artist expressed her creativity in everything from classical to monumental formats.
In the postwar period of the late 1960s, Delaunay developed a more abstract and poetic style. That quilt was later considered a breakthrough in the history of abstraction. Sonia Delaunay’s innovative explorations of color and shapes began in 1911 when she made a quilt for her son Charles. Sonia Delaunay is one of the artists featured in Singulart’s exclusive partner sale with the Perve Galeria.