Sonia Delaunay's Orphism Art Movement

Sonia Delaunay, who was born in November 14th ,1885 in Ukraine was an outstanding Russia-born Jewish painter. In the years before the explosion of World War I, she was regarded as an avant-garde abstract artist who confounded Orphism art movement. Delaunay was adopted by her mother’s brother Henri Terk, after she moved to St. Petersburg. Terk was an acknowledged, successful Jewish lawyer, therefore he was affluent enough to provide a privileged upbringing for Delaunay. During Delaunay’s young ages, she traveled around Europe with the Terks and exposed to various art museums and galleries and learned several foreign languages. When Delaunay was 16, her drawing skill was noted by her art teacher while she was attending an elite secondary school

She was dedicated to preserve her legacy by involving in multiple field, instead of only focus on painting, her works in fashion field actually increased her larger popularity more. One of her illustrations which done for the Vogue magazine cover in 1926 (pic.1) was the most impressed one. With Sonia’s signature style, the title “VOGUE” was consisted of various geometrical color blocks, the “G” of Vogue is also the head of two walking models, who are wearing richly decorated oversized coats. The strong contrast of colors stimulated the spectators’ eyeballs, the abstract color blocks that formed the recognizable subject matter which showed Sonia’s creativity to blend her own artistic style into practical use, since most of her work does not include any subject matters. By the body gestures of the two female models depicted on the cover, we could tell how confident they are, to think deeper, it could also be considered as the artist herself to express her confidence through her work. Through the mainstream media such as magazines, or practical items like clothing and fabrics, Delaunay was exposed to popular fields and successfully gained fame due to her innovative creativity. Although she did not go through too much discrimination as being a Jewish during her stage of pursuing proper artistic skill training, Sonia was a recluse in the 1940, she left Paris and moved to Southern France in order to get rid of the German Occupation and persecution, she kept being low keyed and worked quietly for 10 years, before she regained her career in the 1950s. Sonia Delaunay not just simply was a painter, but an artist who established her own style and led an artistic movement – the orphism movement, the new ways she thinks and works end up being an inspiring and important part of the contemporary