(Gradizk, Ukraine, 1885–1979 Paris)
Rythme coloré, 1959, F. 869, signed and dated Sonia Delaunay 1959, tempera on thin cardboard applied on cardboard, 76 x 56 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Archive Sonia et Robert Delaunay, certificate no. SD 13 630869, signed by Jean Louis Delaunay and M. Richard Riss

Provenance:
Galerie Bernstein, Oslo
Galerie Denise Renée Hans Mayer (label on the reverse and stamp on photo certificate, signed by Hans Mayer)
Galleria Il Capricorno, Venice, until the end of the 1970s
Galleria Martano, Turin (stamp on photo certificate, signed by Liliana De Matteis), there acquired in 1985 by the present owner
Private Collection, Italy

Sonia Terk Delaunay is a sui generis artist, not only in her work but because she belongs to two worlds. Russian by origin, she shared a largely similar education with her fellow Russian protagonists of the avant-garde, as well as a curiosity towards the languages and research of the West. She had a precocious interest in artist’s books, applied arts and, in particular, in the world of textiles, which was yet to be redeemed of its traditional “inferior” conceptual and technical position. She moreover chose an artist (Robert Delaunay) as her life partner in place of the stereotypical husband who could guarantee a certain level of economic well-being and social status.
After her studies in Saint Petersburg, in 1905 Sonia Terk arrived in Paris to conclude her apprenticeship, in particular studying the Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists, and from then on she lived her whole life in Europe.
Following her first marriage to the critic and collector, Wilhelm Unde, Sonia met Robert Delaunay and, one year later, was already married to him. Sonia created a workshop, la Boutique Simultanée, which was a total creative project, a studio that specialised in the creation and sale of clothes, theatrical costumes, patterns and fabrics of her own invention. The results are of exceptional interest: from the books to the collections of gouaches and the artist’s design notes that she created before beginning production of textiles and clothes. This work consisted of studying pure colour and the abstract, organic or geometric shapes which emerged by operating within the hybrid territory of applied arts with a freedom that would otherwise have been unthinkable in the highly controlled field of “serious” painting. She experimented in every possible way and created compositions that were consistent with the most progressive and radical abstract artists, with results that anticipated the colour field painting, Informalism and Concretism of the period after World War Two.
Extract adapted from Martina Corgnati, Artiste: dall’impressionismo al nuovo millennio, B. Mondadori, 2004