Sonia Delaunay’s “Robe Simultanée” (1913), a grand patchwork dress evokes the movements of her lively paintings and is a highlight of the Bard Graduate Center’s show “Sonia Delaunay: Living Art.” Credit… Bruce White, via Pracusa. [New York Times caption and illustration]
Inspired by the theorist Michel Eugène Chevreul — whose 1839 treatise on color harmony is on display in this show — Sonia [Delaunay] and her fellow pioneers in abstraction had to train the individual elements of color, such as contrast and inversion and value, to speak for themselves as never before.
I’m familiar with the phrase “color scheme,” but I’ve got this far without having encountered its synonym “colorway”:
Floated in glass dividers between the swatches are Sonia’s instructional “color cards” to the fabric manufacturer. Exacting and propulsive, these colorways show that she understood the kinships and rivalries of hue with a shrewdly marketable instinct.
The color cards Sonia Delaunay dispatched in the 1920s to her Dutch manufacturer, explaining which patterns and colorways she wanted printed on crepe silk. Credit… Bruce White, via Bard Graduate Center. [New York Times caption and illustration]
… Only in Bard’s dense wardrobe of a show do the sources of Sonia’s painterly voice become obvious: the bunchable, joinable, repeatable textures of cloth.
In her late painting “Rhythm-Color” (1970), Sonia Delaunay returned to the same contrasts of texture and color she had used in her early patchwork dresses and vests of the 1910s, breakout garments that put her on the map of early abstraction. Credit… Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. [New York Times caption and illustration]
It’s fun to see a handsome black-and-white illustration in an article celebrating color (as well as geometry):
While sheltering in Portugal during World War I, Delaunay painted vases, jugs, books and tablecloths with vibrant zig-zags, pie pieces and bull’s-eyes. “I have lived my art,” she once said. Credit… Bibliothèque nationale de France. [New York Times caption and illustration]
Also stimulating to note the connection between Sonia’s handiwork and her husband’s still life:
Robert Delaunay’s “Portuguese Still Life” (1916) expands upon the abstract geometries his wife, Sonia, had emblazoned on their housewares. The husband’s inclusion in the show, while designed to illuminate his wife’s work, “affirms the old ‘power couple’ reputation of these two artists,” our critic says. Credit… Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fla. [New York Times caption and illustration]
(Walker Mimms, “One for the Ages: Sonia Delaunay’s Wearable Abstractions,” New York Times, 4-27-24)
I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.
EthicalDative 
I saw the preview for this article. I was going to ask you for a link!
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