First major Parisian retrospective devoted to Sonia Delaunay since 1967, the exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris brings together, alongside three exceptional reconstructions of environments, more than 400 works: paintings, wall decorations, gouaches , prints, fashion and textiles.

Rythme couleur Paris, 1964, © Pracusa 2013057 and photo © Musée d'Art Moderne / Roger-Viollet

Color rhythm, Paris, 1964
© Pracusa 2013057 and photo © Museum of Modern Art / Roger-Viollet

This monograph which follows the artist's evolution from the dawn of the 1970th century to the end of the XNUMXs, highlights the importance of his activity in the applied arts, his specific place within the European avant-garde, as well as its major role in the abstraction of which it is among the pioneers.

The chronological route, widely documented, illustrates the richness and uniqueness of Sonia Delaunay's work marked by a sustained dialogue between the arts. All the works chosen reveal a personal approach to color, reminiscent of his Russian childhood and his learning to paint in Germany.

While Robert Delaunay conceptualizes abstraction as a universal language, Sonia Delaunay experiences it on the most varied supports (paintings, poster projects, clothes, bindings, household objects) and creates with four hands with the poet Blaise Cendrars La Prose of the Trans-Siberian and the Petite Jehanne de France. During the Great War, her passage in Spain and Portugal coincided with a first development of her activities in the fields of theater and fashion which she marketed in Madrid in 1918, then on her return to Paris in the 1920s. following decade marks the blossoming of a refined abstraction, characteristic of the international style, and in harmony with the architecture as evidenced by the large wall decorations of the Air Pavilion of the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques, presented in Paris for the first time since 1937. The artist's role as “smuggler” between the generation of pioneers of abstraction and that of the post-war period is manifested through his participation in the Salons des Réalités Nouvelles, his involvement in architectural projects and its presence in the Denise René gallery. From the post-war period, Sonia Delaunay's painting experienced a profound renewal which culminated in the late 1960s in an intensely poetic abstract art. His formal and technical creativity was then expressed in monumental works (painting, mosaic, carpet, tapestry) and his late work experienced a final boom in etching albums and Artcurial editions.

Helped by the reconstruction of original sets and devices, and the presence of photographs and films from the period, the exhibition highlights the paradox of a work deeply inscribed in its time - from the Belle Epoque to the 1970s - and the consistency of formal research and the quest for synthesis of the arts also make it timeless.

The exhibition will then be presented at the Tate Modern in London from April 15 to August 9, 2015.

Exhibition produced with the exceptional assistance of the National Library of France and the Pompidou Center

Pratical information

Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris
11 avenue du Président Wilson
75116 Paris
Tel. 01 53 67 40 00

www.mam.paris.fr

Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10h to 18h
Late night opening until 22 p.m.

Tickets
Full price: € 11
Reduced price: 8 €