SONIA DELAUNAY 1885-1979

Sonia Delaunay (born Sara Elievna Stern) was an Ukrainian-born French artist known for her bold use of colours in abstract geometric patterns. "For me, there is no difference between my painting and my so-called decorative work', she says. "I have never considered minor arts artistically frustrating, on the contrary it is an extension of my art".
In 1904, she studied drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and the moved to Paris in 1906. In 1907, she participated in a group exhibition organized by the dealer Wilhelm Uhde at the Notre-Dame-des-Champs gallery, alongside Braque, Picasso, Derain, Dufy, Metzinger and Pascin.
That same year, she met Robert Delaunay whit whom she married three years later. The unique style she created with him is a fusion of cubism and futurism that Guillaume Apollinaire called orphism. She would continue to explore this aesthetic throughout her career through textiles and interior design. In 1964, Delaunay became the first living female artist to be granted a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. She died on December 5, 1979 in Paris at the age of 94, after donating all her graphic works to the Centre Pompidou three years earlier.