Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) - Composition

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979)
Composition, 1962
Lithograph
70 x 50 cm (without frame)
Hand-signed and justified "Epr. d'artiste"

Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet: these color combinations were vital to the artistic practice and theory of Sonia Delaunay, whose vast body of work—paintings and drawings, prints and illustrations, textiles and furnishings, clothing and accessories—enthralled its earliest viewers, users, and wearers. While living in Paris in the 1910s, Delaunay and her husband, Robert Delaunay, began to explore the visual properties of contrasting colors—colors opposite one another on the color wheel. The pairing of two such colors, they realized, heightened the optical intensity, making both colors appear more vivid than they would on their own. Studying color inside and outside of the studio, in their own creations and in Parisian museums, galleries, and exhibitions, Delaunay and Delaunay pursued a shared passion for hues made brilliant, even dynamic through their relationships to each other. “[19]12, [19]13, [19]14, what rich and explosive years for Robert and me!” Delaunay later recalled. “We had rediscovered the moving principle of any work of art: the light, the movement of color.”