Sonia Delaunay emigrated from Russia to Paris in the first years of the twentieth century and helped modernize art in the early on in the Post-Impressionist era. She settled in Paris in 1905, met and married Robert Delaunay in 1910, and joined with him in the development of Orphism, a movement based in Cubism but determined to bring new lyrcism and color to the rather severe works of Picasso and Braque.
Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay is currently on view at the Cooper Hewitt museum.
During the 1920s, she focused on the world of fashion, transforming fabrics into veritable canvases. In the 1930s, she returned to a renewed focus on painting, joining the Abstraction-Creation group in seeking to create an art based upon non-representational elements, often geometrical, and continuing to focus on color as central to painting.
On Friday, March 18 | 6:30–8:00p.m. Petra Timmer, design scholar and Delaunay expert, will moderate a discussion at the Cooper Hewitt in New York. between Matteo de Monti and Elaine Lustig Cohen as they recount their personal experiences with Sonia Delaunay. Matteo de Monti is the grandson of the director of Metz and Co, the Dutch department store that had a long standing collaboration with Delaunay. Elaine Lustig Cohen is a graphic designer and co-author of Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig.
The program will be Webcast live at www.cooperhewitt.org/live.
