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| Baby quilt, Sonia Delaunay, 1912 |
In 1980 I saw a show of Sonia Delaunay’s embroidered textiles
at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. If I hadn’t been with a very
rational friend, I’d think I imagined it, because I’ve seen nary a trace of
that work since, online or elsewhere.
I was reminded of it yesterday when writing about
Mary Delany, because both were attempting to bridge the gap between high
art and women’s traditional crafts.
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From La prose du
Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, a collaborative artist’s
book by Sonia Delaunay and Blaise Cendrars, featuring the Eiffel Tower.
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Sonia Stern (Terk) was born in Ukraine in 1885. At a young age
she was sent to live with relatives in St. Petersburg, where she had the
benefits of affluence, ultimately culminating with an art education in
Karlsruhe and Paris. There she entered a marriage of convenience until she
eventually met and married the painter Robert Delaunay.
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Rythme, 1938, Sonia Delaunay
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The couple pioneered a form of painting called Orphism,
which was the intermediary step between Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.
While art critics ponder its roots in Fauvism and the writings of Paul Signac
and others, I see it as based in quilting.
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| Bathing suit, 1928, Sonia Delaunay |
There are historical grounds for that, as well. “About 1911 I had the idea of making for my
son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I
had seen in the houses of Russian peasants. When it was finished, the
arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions
and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings,”
Sonia Delaunay wrote.
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Simultanéisme dress,
1913, Sonia Delaunay
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The period between the World Wars was one of great invention
for her. She designed fabrics, theater and movie sets and costumes, and opened
a fashion studio. She lectured at the Sorbonne and had a pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris (which gave us the term Art Deco).
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Printed silk satin with metallic embroidery dress, c.
1925-28, Sonia Delaunay.
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Sonia Delaunay outlived her husband by decades. After his death from cancer in
1941, she continued to paint and design, eventually being decorated with the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur.
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Still photo from Le
P’tit Parigot, 1926, costume and set by
Sonia Delaunay.
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The textile embroideries I saw in 1980 combined two great interests
of hers—words and needlework. It’s a pity they’ve vanished from modern
consciousness. But that’s often the lot of women’s design—influential,
intellectual—and ultimately forgotten.
