Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay, was born in Gradizhsk in Ukraine on November 1st, 1885.
With a talent for drawing, she moved to Paris at the beginning of the 20th century to enroll at the Académie de la Palette in Montparnasse, where she only stayed there for a few months. Indeed, Sonia Delaunay preferred to enrich her artistic knowledge, by exploring the galleries and the exhibitions where she discovered the work of post-impressionist painters such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse and Derain. These works, known as "Les Fauves", are directly inspired by the art critic Louis Vauxcelle.

Following the meeting with the German art dealer Wilhelm Uhde with whom she had a romantic relationship before marrying her, Sonia succeeds in joining the circle of the artistic and literary elite. She also got to know Robert Delaunay, whose latter shared the same desire to become a painter. In 1909, Sonia had an affair with Robert before marrying him and had a child of him. She divorced on February 28, 1910 from Wilhem Uhde by judgment of the Civil Court of the Seine and remarried with Robert Victor Felix Delaunay on November 15, 1910 in Paris.

Artistically, Sonia and Robert Delaunay are in perfect harmony. Together, they are at the origin of a new artistic movement called "orphism" and created in 1901. This movement is characterized by the use of bright colors, but also of geometric shapes. Sonia Delaunay's first painting in this style is "Le Bal Bullier". However, the artist also favors other areas of creation, by making decorative objects according to the same principles of colors and geometries. In 1946, Sonia Delaunay created with other abstract artists the “Salon des Réalités Nouvelles” and held exhibitions there with the group Concrete Art.

In 1964, a large retrospective at the Louvre museum saluted her achievements. She became the first woman to make a large exhibition of her work. Today, the Centre George Pompidou, positioning itself as the national gallery of contemporary art in Paris, has in its possession a large part of her works which are two thousand in number, including "Le Bal Bullier".