Sonia Delau­nay (1885−1975), a Ukrain­ian-born French artist and design­er, was cel­e­brat­ed for her vibrant use of col­or and her role in the Orphism move­ment, which empha­sized geo­met­ric forms and bold col­or con­trasts. A close col­lab­o­ra­tor of her hus­band Robert Delau­nay, her work spanned paint­ing, tex­tiles, and fash­ion, influ­enc­ing Mod­ern design. A recent exhi­bi­tion, ​“Sonia Delau­nay: Liv­ing Art,” at the Bard Grad­u­ate Cen­ter in New York City explored how she trans­formed every­day aes­thet­ics through diverse medi­ums, from play­ing cards to dress­es. Here HOWL inter­views Lau­ra Microulis, one of the cura­tors of the exhi­bi­tion, who weighs in on Delaunay’s tal­ents not only as a painter and design­er but also as a skilled arti­san, strate­gic thinker, savvy entre­pre­neur, and pas­sion­ate col­lab­o­ra­tor — some­one who con­scious­ly shaped her own legacy.

Col­or was every­thing for Delau­nay — exam­in­ing the effects of col­or and light and the phe­nom­e­non of Simul­tanism (col­or rela­tions inspired by the sci­ence of optics) was the basis for all of her work. She once declared ​“col­ors are just as sen­si­tive and har­mon­ic as sounds” and, indeed, the com­po­si­tion­al focus for her (whether in a paint­ing, col­lage, or tex­tile) was to set up col­ors in mutu­al oppo­si­tion to make them opti­cal­ly vibrate. She likened it to rhythm and often titled her works as such.

She made no hier­ar­chi­cal dis­tinc­tion between the fine and dec­o­ra­tive arts. Her oeu­vre serves as tes­ta­ment to her con­vic­tion in art’s cen­tral­i­ty to the lived expe­ri­ence — a notion that was con­sis­tent with the mis­sions of many avant-garde move­ments of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Delau­nay was a pio­neer in all areas of her career and con­stant­ly sought to chal­lenge her­self by exper­i­ment­ing with new modes of artis­tic expression.

As an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly ver­sa­tile artist, design­er, and mak­er, she cared deeply about pre­serv­ing tra­di­tion­al craft prac­tices (such as wood­block print­ing and hand knot­ting car­pets) but also was very atten­tive to inno­va­tions across indus­tries. In her tex­tile and fash­ion work, she exper­i­ment­ed with a vari­ety of fibers, includ­ing arti­fi­cial silks and cel­lu­lose, as well as dif­fer­ent pig­ments and meth­ods of pro­duc­tion. Her most ambi­tious tex­tile project was the tis­su-patron which was a fab­ric preprint­ed with the cut­ting lines nec­es­sary for con­struct­ing a gar­ment — enabling con­sumers to make the lat­est fash­ions them­selves at a low cost.

Delau­nay was rel­a­tive­ly late to the mod­ern tapes­try move­ment — hav­ing designed her first tapes­tries in the late 1950s for the com­mer­cial Aubus­son weaver, Ate­lier Tabard. In the mid 1960s she was com­mis­sioned by the French State to design four tapes­tries to be woven by the Gob­elins and Beau­vais man­u­fac­to­ries. But her most vis­i­ble tapes­try pro­duc­tion was exe­cut­ed with the com­mer­cial Aubus­son ate­lier, Pin­ton. From 1970, she designed near­ly twen­ty dif­fer­ent tapes­try com­po­si­tions which were wide­ly exhib­it­ed in France and the Unit­ed States.

Delau­nay left behind an enor­mous archive doc­u­ment­ing her career – most mate­r­i­al is acces­si­ble at the Kandin­sky Library and at the Bib­lio­thèque in Paris. This wealth of pri­ma­ry source mate­r­i­al pro­vid­ed the basis for our research — and indeed there were numer­ous dis­cov­er­ies which were reflect­ed most notably in our exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log. For exam­ple, we chron­i­cle Delaunay’s exten­sive work in inte­ri­or design, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the 1930s; her life and work dur­ing the Ger­man occu­pa­tion of France; and the aes­thet­i­cal­ly rich artis­tic achieve­ments of her late career includ­ing designs for stained glass, tapes­tries, and mosaics.

One of the most impor­tant new dis­cov­er­ies was one of Sonia Delaunay’s per­son­al notebook/​journals dat­ing from 1967, which had nev­er before been on pub­lic view. She titled it, ​“Des idées commes ils vien­nent libre­ment” [Ideas as they flow freely] and it is an inti­mate record of her pro­fes­sion­al projects at the time, such as her series of hand-knot­ted rug designs, stained glass win­dows, and the exte­ri­or paint scheme for a 1967 Matra 530 sports­car, along with artic­u­late thoughts on friend­ship, phi­los­o­phy, and liv­ing. This note­book rep­re­sents a pro­found expres­sion of Delaunay’s inner life, con­veyed in both words and graph­ics, show­ing how her reflec­tions man­i­fest­ed them­selves in an intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al form at the same time.

The exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue for Sonia Delau­nay: Liv­ing Art, edit­ed by Lau­ra Microulis and Wale­ria Doro­go­va, is avail­able to pur­chase from the Bard Grad­u­ate Center.

Lau­ra Microulis is research cura­tor at the Bard Grad­u­ate Cen­ter. Spe­cial­iz­ing in the mate­r­i­al cul­ture of the long nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, her pub­lished work has focused on the recov­ery of insti­tu­tion­al his­to­ries, the nature of patron­age rela­tion­ships, and the nar­ra­tive life cycle of objects and inte­ri­ors. She holds an MA and PhD from Bard Grad­u­ate Center.