Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Sonia Delaunay: La Moderne

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Sonia Delaunay: La Moderne

by John McGee

In an early sketch dated 1913, Sonia Delaunay captured the reflections of Paris’ new gas lamps by vigorously scratching yellow, blue, green, red and brown crayons into abutting blocks of color. Her light didn’t illuminate nor define shapes but became a physical substance. Such sharply contrasting, vibrant colors-turned-form would become the hallmark of Delaunay’s long, diverse and genre-defying career. 

Organized by the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Jersey and curator Jan Garden Castro, this retrospective covers Delaunay’s pioneering early cross-over experiments in design, fashion and painting and includes an extensive selection of her later lithographs, wall hangings and several large paintings. There’s even a 1970 painting from the Richard Nixon presidential collection, a gift from President Pompidou. 

Born in the Ukraine in 1885, Sonia Delaunay moved to Paris when she was twenty and became part of the art scene that included Picasso, Braque and Apollinaire. She also met and married Robert Delaunay, a prominent painter. Paris in the early part of the 20th century may have been bohemian and permissive, but a woman still had her place: Sonia’s art career took a backseat to her well-known husband until long after his death in 1941. 

Matra sports car designed by Sonia Delaunay, 1967

Though Sonia kept out of her husband’s way in the fine art arena, she was busy with design and fashion, many examples of which are on view here—bold-patterned textiles for friends or socialites like Nancy Cunard, outfits and sets for the film industry, and eccentric yellow and black triangular costumes for avant-garde theater. Also included is one of her important contributions to early modernism, a painting in collaboration with the long, vertical, free-form poem Prose of the Trans-Siberian and the little Jehanne of France by Blaise Cendrars (1913). 

As quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Delaunay’s artistic goals were “to have fun, to create interactive games to play with viewers, to use basic colors, and to compose using color the way a poet composes using language.” Such poetic aspirations call to mind Wassily Kandinsky, a friend of husband Robert, but Sonia’s compositions of solid stripes, arcs, circles and zigzags are her own. 

Some theorists trace Delaunay’s color sensibility to her working-class Jewish-Ukrainian roots and the costumes and traditions of her childhood. At the least a homey quality endured—besides the various lampshades, pillowcases and vests she made for herself and her friends, one of Delaunay’s most famous pieces was a well-composed patchwork quilt for her son’s crib (unfortunately not in the show). 

Cosmopolitan and home-spun, Delaunay helped bring modernism to form while expanding the idea of what an artist could be. Though her painting became more prominent later in life (and the late works get a bit repetitive), she continued to excel at designing things, including playing cards (1964), a stained glass window (1967), and even the paint job of a Matra sports car (1967). Sonia Delaunay died in 1979. 

Open since spring 2000, Urawa Art Museum in Saitama is notable for its collection of artist’s books and their forward-thinking art education program. If you live in central Tokyo though, you may want to wait for this show to come to the Art Deco Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Museum (near Meguro station) this July-September.

This exhibition was held Jan-Mar 2002 at Urawa Art Museum in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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