Sonia Delaunay
Quinn: Hello and welcome to Pictorial, a podcast where two people who did not go to art school learn about something really cool in art history and then share it with you. So I'm Quinn Rose. I am really excited about this week's episode. I love learning about artists in history, who I feel like, I dunno, I should have learned about in school, but since I can only name about maybe 10 fine artists on the top of my head I don't know any of them, so I'm really excited about this person.
Betty: Hi, I'm Betty. I'm, I'm also someone who's very excited to learn about all kinds of different and interesting things in art history that again, I feel like I should, should have known or should have learned about. And I feel really bad actually. I realized while researching for this artist that I do actually know who her husband is, but I did not know who she was, but now I kind of find her much more interesting. So I'm kind of, I'm glad to delve into this one.
Quinn: Oh, I'm intrigued to hear more about that. So today we are talking about an artist called, uh, Sonia Delaunay. She is a Ukrainian Jewish born artist, who was raised in Russia and then lived out most of her life in Paris with brief spins living in other European countries. Uh, so her last name Delaunay is French, from her French husband, but she was born, well, actually yeah. I came across like three different versions of her name. I don't know if you came across the same thing. So she was born in 1885, like I said, in Ukraine, um, which was part of the Russian empire. And so she was born as Sarah Stern, which actually is like a super chill name, which is funny. But then she ended up, her parents were—did not have a lot of money. And she ended up being raised by her uncle in Russia, and she was never legally adopted by him, but she did take on his last name and kind of considered her aunt and uncle her, her parents, since she was raised by them for most of her life. And so then she went by, Sonia Terk, until she took on her, husband's name, which then she was known by for the rest of her life. And sort of like in the history books.
Betty: Yeah. So I realized, I'm—I have heard of Robert Delaunay before and, um, I think I saw the, I can't remember where it was, where I saw this painting, but it's a painting called a Champ de Mars : La Tour Rouge. So it's a painting basically of the Eiffel Tower, and it's in the Art Institute of Chicago. So I feel like what you can go see. Uh, so I feel like that may have been where I saw it, but it also could have been, cause we had a Futurism exhibition here in Toronto, of maybe like four or five years ago. And I distinctively remember seeing like this fragmented red Eiffel Tower picture, so I might have seen it there. But that's kinda how I knew about him, which is like, he was kind of loosely associated with the Futurists—Futurism movement. So yeah, that's kinda where I knew him from. But we can, and later we'll talk about kind of like her, him and Sonia, they ended up kind of founding their own art movement later on.
Quinn: Yeah, I had never heard of either of them, or at least I couldn't like their names and not ring a bell. I'm sure I've seen their arts in places either like in a museum or in just pictures of them somewhere because turns out, they were very successful. Who knew? Not me.
Betty: Yeah. I only realized, I like, I knew him when I started researching and I'm like, Oh my God, I have seen these paintings before. And then I was like, Oh yeah, like I saw him in like this exhibition. So yeah, it was like, I wasn't like super familiar with Robert Delaunay's paintings either.
Quinn: But we'll get into their art movement in a moment because it's a huge part of her sort of body of work. But a moment for her first husband, which I thought this was a very interesting part of her story. The interesting thing about Sonia today is she was recognized as artistically gifted at a young age, and since she was being raised by a wealthy Russian family, she had the means to pursue this as a career. And so she went to art school in Germany, and then she moved to Paris afterwards and continued studying art in Paris. And then she spent a lot of time, like in the galleries around the city and meeting lots of artists there. Obviously this is like Paris. Especially in the early 1900s was definitely sort of a hot spot for artists. So there were a lot of people that she brushed elbows with there. And then at part of this, she met a gallery owner whose name was Wilhelm Uhde. I don't know how to say it.
Betty: I'm not sure how to pronounce that either. Yeah.
Quinn: "U H D E." So, and he was about 10 years older than her. He was gay, and they decided to get married because he wanted sort of the safety of having like a publicly heterosexual marriage, and she wanted to stay in France and not have to go back to Russia. So getting married was a pretty easy way to achieve both of those goals. And they were like, okay. So it seems like this was a very sort of like a, a good understanding between the two of them from day one. And then a couple of years afterwards, she ended up meeting Robert Delaunay and falling in love with him. And um, they immediately basically began a relationship and she was pregnant. And so then she was like, uh, Hey, Wilhelm. Like, I think we should get a divorce and I'm going to marry this guy. And he was like, yeah, okay.
Betty: Yeah, it seems, I read in a bunch of places that they were both like, okay, yeah, that's cool. It sounds good to me. Like it was very mutually amicable of a divorce that they had.
Quinn: I just, I really liked that. I mean, obviously it wasn't great that they had to get married to achieve their goals, because obviously those are two things that hopefully in today's world that people that you wouldn't feel the need to do, to like achieve freedom as a young woman, or to, to live freely as a gay man. But I liked that they did in their lives find ways to do that safely with each other.
Betty: Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, I thought, I found that pretty interesting and it was pretty interesting how she met, uh, her second husband Robert, I think through a Wilhelm Uhde, um, cause he had a gallery that, that he owned and she was, I think she—I believe she had like shown some of her work there too, but then she met, yeah, she was introduced to Robert through him. And you know, then she was like, Oh yeah, I like this guy. And so he was her true life partner.
Quinn: Yeah. Thank you, first husband for introducing me to my second husband.
Quinn: Yeah, so she gave birth to their son Charles in January of 1911 which was about two months after they got married. So that's not even a shotgun wedding at that point. Like you can't even pretend that their child was born early. They were just like, yeah, whatever. It's fine. Yeah.
Betty: I think she, I guess she was probably like pretty pregnant when they got married.
Quinn: Yeah. But they were married for—sadly not their entire lives because she outlived him significantly. But they were married until the end of Robert's life and they only, they had one son, Charles, and seemed to have a remarkably happy and stable family home for early 1900s Paris.
Betty: Yeah, that's true. I read, actually, I read an interesting quote that she had said, like after the birth of her son. And she kind of summarized that as sort of like an inspiration of her art. So she said, in 1911, I had the idea of making for my son who had just been born a blanket composed of—it's a fabric like those had seen in the houses of Russian peasants when it was finished. The arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke Cuba's conceptions and then we try to apply the same process to other objects and paintings. Um, I thought that was like a really great encapsulation of just like her influences and her—a good description of her work, which is like pieces of colorful fabrics. And she's talking about how it's kind of inspired in a bit from her childhood, but also inspired by her family and her son, but also by cubism, which she was totally around at the time. So I thought that was like a really good way to capture her, like art style as a whole.
Quinn: Yeah, I want to get really into her whole art practice, and whole movement that she co-founded. But just a brief other thing about her background related to the quote you just read. Cause I've seen that quote in some places where she attributes it to Russian peasants and some places where it's attributed specifically to Ukrainian peasants. And I find it interesting that in some of the sources I was reading about her, they took a moment to say like, "but she was always really inspired by her peasant Ukrainian roots! And she always remembered like the colors of that village, And that was always part of her work throughout her whole life!" There's one thing that was like the Ukrainian sunset is so beautiful that has stuck with her. You'd like Ukrainian wedding dresses, like all these different things, and I am not sure how much of that is romanticization of her as a like, very wealthy, privileged person for her times say like, "but she had these really beautiful peasant roots," or if it—if that was true. And it's just that, like people have different levels of acknowledgement of that, but I just think that's kind of funny. But with all of that said, let's actually talk about the super cool art movement that she was involved in, which I really like. And some people call it or Orphism and some people call it Simultaneism is some simultaneous them.
Yeah.
Betty: I think it's simultaneous. is how I'm, I've been saying it, but yeah, I have no idea. Orphism is definitely easier to pronounce.
Quinn: Yes. I also was looking up, I was like, why is it called Orphism? And I couldn't find a source for a little while. And then finally someone actually attributed it and it is named after Orpheus from Greek mythology.
Betty: Oh.
Quinn: It was named by—by the way, just we totally ruined ourselves by doing a French artist, can I just say.
Betty: I was just, I, I'm so bad at pronouncing French, especially for a Canadian person that I'm going to butcher a lot of these names.
Quinn: Yeah. But I, that was, that's more just a pre-warning to everyone as the name I'm about to attempt to say, but the name Orphism was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire. Um, it's good to me. There'll be a link in the show notes. You can look at his name yourself. Anyway, he is, he's by all accounts was the person who, who named it, named this variation on Cubism as Orphism because quote unquote, "he felt the use of color brought movement, light and musical qualities to the artwork, and therefore referenced the legendary poet and singer, ancient Greek mythology Orpheus,: which I think is so whimsical.
Betty: Yeah. And I kind of, I liked the term the simultaneous, simultaneousism as well cause it kind of, it sort of is more descriptive I think of what the visuals are. Cause it's, it's meant to mean simultaneous contrast. Which is like, so a thing that they do is they match primary and secondary colors together, like red and green and yellow and purple or blue and orange. And it creates, like, it's not just in works that they do. Like, whenever you see that type of juxtapose. Juxtaposition. Um, you see like the colors create like a visual vibration. It's almost like a optical illusion, sort of. So yeah. So it's kind of either one of these terms define what they're trying to do.
Quinn: If you're, if you're trying to visualize what this kind of art looks like, it's definitely modern art. It's a form of Cubism, but the whole idea of cubism is they're kind of muted colors and a lot of similar colors in one painting, whereas the Orphists were like, no, no, no. Color everywhere. So they use these kinds of ideas of the color theory that you were just talking about with abstract shapes and like lots of, I don't even know how to describe it, but, but sometimes there'll be like more circular shapes. Sometimes it'll be like fully abstracted, like psychedelic kind of kaleidoscope. Things like if you took a freeze frame on a kaleidoscope scope. That's what a lot of this would look like.
Betty: It's, it also seems like they were most definitely influenced by Fauvism, which is also an art movement that heavily focuses on color. But like an interesting thing about is that they sort of... like they explore color in a unconventional types of ways. Yeah, like, especially when I'm looking at some of Robert Delaunay's works is like, he has, has a self portrait and like he's not, he didn't paint himself in like what you would naturally assume would be like the colors of someone's face. So like he's using like, pinks and greens and purples and like these, like, the colors that you wouldn't think of when you like when you paint someone's face. And so, yeah, like a similar image is this painting by Sonia called Yellow Nude. It's kind of a, it's a painting of this woman, like it's a nude woman, like her skin is like yellowish, but you see these bright blues and purples and just these like really high contrast, really intense colors, like on a person's body that you wouldn't naturally think of that would occur on a person's body and her, this like, yellow nude painting that she did, reminds me actually a lot of Gauguin, which... is probably someone she—I don't know if I, like I read somewhere if she's, she's definitely inspired by him, but I don't know if she met him. It's likely like at around this time. But yeah, so it just seems like there's definitely this like Post-Impressionist Fauvism influence on their art movement.
Quinn: And she also seemed to have like a pretty clear progression in terms of her art, where she started with more—I mean, she never was into Realism, but more directly representational, um, like in that, in this nude that she painted. Whereas more later in her career as things gotten more and more abstract, more and more like what you would imagine as kind of this idea of like very block, modern art, is what she was doing later in her career.
Betty: For sure. Like it's, it seems like she, yeah, she kinda started with more figurative works and it became more abstract, but then it also... like she was also someone who, I read that like she didn't see a boundary between like, the fine arts and craft and, or like design. And she like, I think we'll get into a little bit later that like, she also eventually ended up doing like fashion design and textile design and it kind of like blurred into a lot of her practices blurred into, like, yeah. Like more craft and more like designed type of work.
Quinn: Yeah, let's talk about this. So you may have noticed from her being born in the late 19th century, she lived through the Great Depression and both World Wars. So there was a lot going on that affected her kind of life and career as an artist. Well actually starting really with the Russian revolution. That kind of ended her source of income from Russia, which I've read in most places, was like her family sent her money. I also saw one reference that she owned some property in Russia that she earned income off of. I'm not totally sure if that's completely true, or if it's like her family owned property, that she was the beneficiary of the profits. But one way or another she was getting, she was being financially supported, through from Russia. And that kind of ended with the Russian revolution. Cause that's kinda gonna choke off income streams. So that's when she started really doing this, this fashion design, and a big part of this was with World War One, right? Kind of in that same era where the women had taken on so many different roles during World War One and it as the war ended, that was reflected in the fashions of the time, and it was, you know, the Roaring Twenties. They're not sticking to the same kind of restrictive fashion city for, and when she, you know, it, Delaunay is kind of really bright, modern styles really translated well to close and they translated well to the sensibilities of women trying to buy cool modern clothes at the time.
Betty: Yeah, exactly. I kinda, I also read that like she designed a lot of clothing that was like very loosely fitting or like billowing and like, it allowed you to sort of have free movement of your body a lot more so, and yeah, like definitely after World War One, like women were, like many were in the workforce and are, were, are totally like, I'm not going back to being a housewife or going back inside and not working. So yeah, like a lot of her clothing was fairly—it was just like very easy, very comfortable and very like loosely fitting that a lot of women were super into. And like, also, you know, it was—they were colorful and trendy, like her, her designs really kind of embodied this new woman experience. And I think I also read that she was kind of the breadwinner in her household cause she was the one who had like, the business of doing like textile and designs and stuff like that.
Quinn: Yeah, she definitely was because they were both artists and she always claimed that there was never a competition between them as artists, and that they were very much like working together and supporting each other, which I really hope is true. Cause that's lovely. But I mean, she's the one who turned to, to working in design to having a very successful fashion business. And so she was definitely bringing in—bringing home the bacon, as they say, which is also very cool for the time. And probably also helped her image. I mean, if I was a young woman in the 20s wanting to buy modern clothes, and I heard there was a primary breadwinner, woman designer, selling bright colors down the street, I feel like, hell yeah.
Betty: Yeah, for sure. And I'm not sure if this is how she got into doing, uh, doing fashion design, but it turned out like her and Robert, they were, I think apparently vacationing in Spain and they just in like 1914 or something, and they just decided to stay. So they kind of lived in like the Spain, uh, Portugal, area for a number of years. And in 1917, there was a play, there was a play by,—someone whose name I'm also gonna butcher. Um, I think it's surrogate. Diaghilev, uh, he had a production of Cleopatra in Madrid and her—and Sonia and Robert were hired to do the, uh, Robert did the set design and Sonia did the costume design for the play. So yeah, she, she like, so later on she was also known for someone who did a lot of costumes for plays as well. So I'm not sure if like she started off as doing, being a costume designer and then moved into just a fashion designer overall, or if she did that before. But basically she was doing a lot of textile and costume work by like late 1910s.
Quinn: Yeah, I think, I think you're right that those kind of went hand in hand. And then she also, like, she went on to design for film costumes as well, which is super cool. Now after World War One, and then after the whole Roaring Twenties boom, uh, the Great Depression did hit not fun time. Um, and it did. To her sort of public facing business ended up closing. But she continued being an artist and she continued working with private clients and just sort of like a much smaller scale. And I don't know if this is just her optimism or, or, or sort of like, tings looking better in hindsight, but she claimed that this was like a freedom for her. And that she was like, you know what? Now I'm not shackled by this, this textiles business I have, and now I'm just free to work one on one with clients because I am unemployed.
Betty: Right. Yeah, exactly. I think, yeah, she also like went and took on other things, like I read that she did like illustrations for magazine covers. She did some interior decorating and like doing window displays and things like that during the thirties. So I think like a lot of other people, she was just like, well, I need work because. You know, it's a Depression and we have no money, so I'm just going to go do whatever it is that's going to pay me. And she just ended up being this like really diverse artist slash designer.
Quinn: She is so cool. For sure. One of the things that struck me while reading about her was that she just, first of all, was very successful, which was uncommon for a woman at that time, to be so kind of mainstream successful. I will also get to sort of like her many, many accolades in a moment. But, and of course she was in a very privileged position and it was sort of set up to do this. And it almost reminds me of what we were just talking about on a recent episode. We were talking about postcards because there was a series called Beethoven is a Lesbian. Which is just sort of poking at this idea that maybe in a world where all people were created equal and given equal opportunities, we might consider—the person that we consider the greatest composer of the world could have been a lesbian. And I feel like this, she's almost sort of an example of that is like, she was given opportunities and she was given education and connections and hey, look, she became a really successful, important artist who cofounded this entire art movement. But I also was just struck by her as someone who had such a full interesting life who had a stable family, who did art and design and like tried all of these different things and traveled and just seemed like a really cool person and more real than I think we expect from our historical figures that I was like, oh, even though, I mean she only, she only passed away in the 1970s, and she was in her nineties before she died, which is incredible. But even, even still, you kind of think like, oh, someone was born in the 1800s you can kind of only think about them in black and white.
Betty: Right.
Quinn: But I'm like, wow, this is a, this is a person.
Betty: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It's, yeah, she's kind of, I think like, you know, I was seeing some like earlier photos of her when she was younger, and it does look like, you know, some like old, black and white photo from like late 1800s. But then, just sort of like seeing her work and yeah, knowing that like she lived until like in, I think she's probably lived almost as long or around the same time. Like, I think Picasso died in like the seventies as well. Yeah, it's just like, especially seeing her work and seeing her art style. Like, she just totally embodies this, like, contemporary woman, like feel to just, her—yeah, like her life as well as her work. Um, yeah. It's, yeah, it's pretty, pretty incredible.
Quinn: There's an interview that she did only a few months before she passed away that you can read online and it's quite great. And one of the things that they. He asked her if she's met a bunch of artists and he asked her if she likes Picasso, and she said, "never much Picasso. He always looked unhealthy."
Betty: Oh yeah. I read that too. I'm like, that's, that's pretty awesome. I was just actually, I was just looking at, and other work that she did and I'm trying to figure out, I figured out, so, I'm gonna send you a link, but basically she did this—illustration for a poem. And I think it's like multiple pages, or like, or... again, I'm going to butcher this name. So it's love proves, do trans Siberian, a Dillup T jihad, the France. So it's a poem with, so it's pros of the trans Siberian and little Jahan of France. It was done by, um, the poet blaze, a sender, ours.
And so. Like, she basically, she painted this like she painted like the words like in, in the text as well as like an illustration that stretches I think meters long on the side. And there's like, I think, I think it's like multiple pages and I read that it's like supposed to, if you pile them together, it's supposed to reach like 300 feet high if all the, if all the prints of the poems are put from end to end. And apparently that's the height of the Eiffel tower. But I just thought like, it's a really beautiful, beautiful and colorful, way to illustrate for a poem. Like, when I first heard that's an illustration I was thinking of like, oh, like little pictures of like people, but then no, as these washes of color that's like, just alongside the text and it's just so interesting how, yeah, like she was someone who did like dresses and fashion, but then also illustrated for poetry.
Quinn: This is gorgeous. I love how you can see her work stylistically, there are clear themes that go through what everything that she does in terms of how she uses color, and yet can she can adapt it to all of these different mediums. I wonder if she ever used postcards.
Betty: I don't know. She, she, yeah. That would be awesome, if she designed postcards. Se did so much.
Quinn: I want to paint a postcard in the style of Sonia Delaunay.
Betty: Oh my God, do it. That could be a nice little assignment that we do, and then maybe we'll put it on Instagram.
Quinn: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's make this an official challenge. We should both do one and then if anyone wants to join in. I guess in your postcards.
Betty: Okay. Awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. @PictorialPod, which we'll mention again later.
Quinn: Get that promo
Betty: Exactly.
Quinn: Wow. I can't believe I didn't know who this person was before because these are all beautiful.
Betty: Yeah, no, I, I feel the same way. Like there is just a lot—like so much about her and just about, you know, like her designs and her paintings. I think we mentioned earlier, so she actually, or she became the first woman to have a retrospective in the Louvre.
Quinn: Yeah. It was in 1964 and she was one of the very first living people ever to have a retrospective the Louvre, um, which is super cool.
Betty: Yeah. Like she was one of these people that was fortunately was like recognized in her lifetime. Unlike, you know, some other impressionist artists who like Van Gogh, who, you know, only sold one painting in his life and lived a very, you know, terrible life basically. But she actually was recognized. And I think she was also, she was, I think the, like she was given like a reception by Queen Elizabeth in like 1978 or something. And yeah, like, just definitely had some recognition in her life.
Quinn: Yeah. She was named an Officer in the French Legion of Honor, which as far as I can tell, is kind of like being knighted for French people. So like being recognized for extraordinary service in her field. I dunno if I was not knowing her work is like an us problem, if maybe she's really big in France, but not well—not that well known in America. Cause it seems like she's very successful relatively recently. Or maybe it's one of those things that like, again, like I just don't think, I think that like if I—it would be difficult for me to sit down and really name that many artists. There are obviously like so many more people who made a living or, or achieved acclaim then I can personally name. So maybe that's just the issue here. But I'm glad I know about her now.
Betty: Yeah, me too. And I like, I feel like I, I should know of her now. Just cause of working in a art gallery for seven years and like technically being able to name quite a few like contemporary artists. But still there are people that I do not know.
Quinn: One thing that I will say, going back to what you were talking about at the very beginning, about recognizing her husband is that I sort of alluded to—her husband had died young. And so he passed away in 1941 from cancer, and she lived until 1979 and was buried next to him. There are some accounts that she spent a decent amount of her time in her career ensuring his legacy and making sure that he was recognized for his contributions to art and maybe spent less time securing her own. I'm sure that the forces of the universe also helped that disparity. But as it is, there is, I think something to that in that she was—she knew that she would continue to live and gain publicity and create art. And so she did make sure that he was also recognized as a cofounder of this movement and that his art was maintained and everything.
Betty: Yeah, that's really great to also learn that like she had such a great relationship with her husband and yeah, wasn't like a competition and it wasn't like, you know, he was more recognized in her or something, and she was—it wasn't like she was unhappy about that and that they actually really did have like a good, they were just like, they seem like really good partners who collaborated really well together and who kind of like fed off of each other creatively, most likely. So yeah, it's really great to know that they had such a great relationship.
Quinn: I support them, and I am so glad that we learned about her this week.
Betty: Yeah, me too. In addition to just how amazing she was, I did read that there is a lot of people who, a lot of other artists later on who kind of attribute their influences towards her. So apparently she, so like, Orphism—it really, it influenced later on, this movement called opt art, which is kind of like optical illusion type of art. So there's like an artist called Bridget Riley who uses like similarly, um, colors and shapes to create these like vibrations and optical illusions. And then, there's also artists, Paul Klee who attributes like his influences to Orphism. And also like kinetic art, which is an art movement I mentioned before. They also drew like heavy influences from Orphism as well. So yeah, like it's just, like her, like she has like a legacy that goes beyond just her work that I definitely continued throughout the 20th century and influenced a lot of other artists.
Quinn: What a boss. Yeah. Awesome. True. I'm saying hero of . Again, I cannot stress this enough. Very, very cool art. You know, I feel like sometimes you're learning about a famous artists and you, you can appreciate them, but I'm looking at this and I was like, I would love to have one of these pieces in my home.
Betty: Yeah no, that's true. They are very beautiful. Like, I just, I really love, I actually love most of the stuff that she did that was influenced by like those like dancers. There's ones that's called Flamenco Dancer. And then there's one that I can't remember the name of, but it's just like a bunch of dancers like dancing like along this, like really long, big, like 12 foot long painting. It's probably way too big to actually fit inside my apartment. Like I think the length of the painting is probably like three times the length of my apartment, so I probably can't actually have it on my wall, but it would be great to have it.
Quinn: Let's crowdfund. Bigger apartment and the art.
Betty: Yeah, exactly.
Quinn: But with all of that, thank you so much for listening to this episode and learning about Sonia Delaunay with us. Please, I mean, feel free to tell us all the names that we pronounced wrong, but be gentle with us, at least we're self-aware. Yeah. If you want to follow the show, you can do that on Twitter or Instagram at @PictorialPod where we do post pictures of all of these images that we have talked about. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.
Betty: And you can follow me at on Twitter and Instagram @articulationsV and I am also on YouTube at Articulations.
Quinn: And if you have any topic that you think will be good for us to cover on the show. You can also suggest that at the Google form linked in the show notes. Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!