Unit 3 - Research - Seeing - Sonia Delaunay, Confucius, Hockney.

Context - Sonia Delaunay

I have always believed colour can create an emotional response in its audience.

I don’t argue when anyone disagrees with this statements as I if you dont see it, you dont see it, but oneday if you are lucky enough you might.

Look hard enough and something always happens.

“Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.”

"David Hockney Quotes." BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2021. 9 July 2021. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/david_hockney_470317

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” Confucius

A Quote by Confucius. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3213-i-hear-and-i-forget-i-see-and-i-remember. Accessed 21 Aug. 2021.

At the BASTIAN the SONIA DELAUNAY show titled RHYTHM AND COLOUR confirmed this for me - along with the benifts of collaboration. Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) was a pioneering and influential artist whose ground-breaking experiments in abstraction spanned the entire arc of the twentieth century. Born in Russia and attending art school in Germany, Delaunay moved to Paris in 1908 and in the years that followed found herself at the heart of the avant-garde community at the dawn of Cubism. Her marriage to Robert Delaunay in 1910 played a significant role in the development of the couple’s practice with the pair forming what was to become their own completely distinct abstract language. Leaning heavily on Sonia’s experience with Russian folk-craft melded with the dynamic of the Parisian avant garde, their work anticipated the experiments with colour and shape that would become the Delaunay hallmark style, simultané. They were champions of one another and together they entertained and held salons. Among their friends were artists such as Kandinsky and Chagall, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. It is possible that Sonia Delaunay steered herself away from painting in the central decades of her life in order to look after their children and to give Robert the space to pursue his, so they could work alongside each other on their mutual projects without coming into direct competition. During this period Sonia turned to textiles and fashion designing fabrics for the Amsterdam luxury store Metz & Co., and latterly for Liberty. Upon Robert’s death in 1941, Delaunay championed his legacy, spending years pushing for recognition of her husband’s practice rather than her own. It was not until the 1950’s that Delaunay began to re-apply herself to the painting practice she had begun almost forty years prior. The works on display here exemplify the essence of her early investigations into colour contrasts and narrate the development that took place in the latter half of her life, most notably in the series of intimate gouache works on paper entitled, Rythme coloré. Indeed, the history of modernism as written by men, duly elected Robert his place in art history, but despite the freedom and ambition enjoyed by Delaunay in Paris her significance is still yet to be completely understood and the contribution of women in this period has been largely ignored. Thus, for a long time Sonia Delaunay has been seen as wife and intellectual companion of the more famous Robert, rather than the true pioneer she was and the ‘mother of abstraction.’ “The true new painting will begin when we understand that colour has a life of its own, that the infinite combinations of colour have their poetry and their poetic language much more expressive than by the old means. It is a mysterious language related to vibrations, the very life of colour. In this field there are endless new possibilities.” Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay Projet de Couverture d’Album No.1, 1916 Oil wax on paper 23.1 x 24 cms / 9.2 x 9.5 in.

Sonia Delaunay Prismes electriques 1914 Centre Pompidou Collection, Mnam / Cci, Paris © Pracusa 2013057

Sources

‘Sonia Delaunay | BASTIAN’. Aeneas Bastian Limited, https://privateviews.artlogic.net/2/c567cb3ebd7d419cafb64f/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2021

Tate. ‘The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay – Press Release’. Tate, https://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/ey-exhibition-sonia-delaunay. Accessed 21 Aug. 2021.

A Quote by Confucius. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3213-i-hear-and-i-forget-i-see-and-i-remember. Accessed 21 Aug. 2021.

‘David Hockney Quotes’. BrainyQuote, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/david_hockney_470317. Accessed 21 Aug. 2021.

• Sonia Delaunay Projet de tissu, 1926 Signed and inscribed »Sonia Delaunay F5153« lower right; Signed and inscribed »Sonia Delaunay N159« lower left ink and gouache on paper 34.9 x 35.2 cm / 13.7 x 13.8 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur #1460, 1967 Signed »Sonia Delaunay« lower right Gouache on paper 68 x 56.8 cm / 26.7 x 22.3 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur, 1971 Signed »Sonia Delaunay« lower right Gouache and graphite on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur, 1971 Gouache on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur, 1970 Gouache on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur, c. 1970 Gouache and graphite on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur, 1971 Signed and dated »Sonia Delaunay 71« lower right Gouache and graphite on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Rythme Couleur, 1970 Gouache and graphite on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Composition, 1977 Dated »21-7-77« lower right Graphite on paper 28.6 x 22.8 cm / 11.3 x 9 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Helice Olympie, 1969 Signed lower right »Sonia Delaunay« and inscribed lower left »HC« (an hors commerce impression aside from the edition of 75) Lithograph Image: 59 x 47 cm/ 23.2 x 18.5 in. Sheet: 76 x 56 cm/ 29.9 x 22 in. Edition 75
  

• Sonia Delaunay Red and Black Semi circles on Blue background , 1964 Signed lower right »Sonia Delaunay« and numbered »66/75« lower left Lithograph printed in colours Image: 40 x 38 cm/ 15.7 x 14.9 in. Sheet: 60 x 45 cm/ 23.6 x 17.7 in. Edition 75
  

• Sonia Delaunay Untitled, 1966 Signed lower right »Sonia Delaunay« and numbered »52/100« lower left Etching and aquatint in colours on Rives BFK paper Plate: 40 x 36.5 cm/ 15.7 x 14.2 Sheet: 63 x 45 cm/ 24.8 x 17.7 in. Edition 100
  

• Sonia Delaunay Thunderbird, 1973 Signed lower right »Sonia Delaunay« and inscribed lower left »EA I« (an epreuve d’artiste impression aside from the edition of 75) Lithograph printed in colours Image: 52.5 x 42 cm/ 20.4 x 16.5 Sheet: 75.5 x 56 cm/ 29.5 x 22 in. Edition 75
  

• André Villers Portrait of Sonia Delaunay , c.1975 Indistinctly signed lower left Gelatin silver print 30 x 40 cm / 11.8 x 15.7 in.
  

• Sonia Delaunay Unesco Année Internationale de la femme 1975, 1975 Plate signed Lithographic poster printed in colours, published by Mourlot, Paris, on the occassion of the 'International Year of The Woman' 51.2 x 77.3 cm/ 20.16 x 30.43 in.