SONIA DELAUNAY (1885 – 1979)

Major artist of the orphism, which she contributed to create with her husband Robert Delaunay is one of the most distinctive artistic styles of the twentieth century.

A pioneer of abstraction, Sonia Delaunay devoted her life to practicing the language of color in favor of the quest that animated her: pure painting. Convinced that art has the power to effect change in society, she brought painting and the art of color into everyday life – through fashion, theater, textiles, tapestry, fabric design, mosaics, furniture, interior design, books, typography, drawing and painting.

SONIA DELAUNAY AND THE ART OF TAPESTRY

The Hadjer Gallery has the privilege of offering one of the largest selections of important Sonia Delaunay tapestries in the world. From the 1960’s, the recourse to tapestry is for the artist the logical consequence, the outcome of any creative process. It is not as for others to transpose in a different technique paintings and gouaches already invented but to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the work of wool to achieve new designs. 

There is probably no contemporary painter who has, as well as Sonia Delaunay, assimilated the properties of fabrics to make them translate the color as matter and texture as well as flat surface. She first used existing fabrics, which she organized in her own way, and then invented new fabrics that had all the qualities of the most audacious painted works. It was only natural that she should come to tapestry, which allows the most complex composition to be integrated into the work. No one was better prepared to express herself in terms of weaving, and to project her thoughts onto the walls in this language that is more supple, warmer than that of painting, of equal strength and richness.

Sonia Delaunay – Finistère – 1972, Atelier Pinton, Aubusson, France 

EXHIBITION OF SONIA DELAUNAY TAPESTRIES

Each tapestry, each of these sentences is like a piece of life, life itself being for Sonia Delaunay a patchwork, a puzzle, like her work where each element comes to interweave without another, where the old memory is always close to the present and the future; these tapestries like the work of Sonia Delaunay all are always turned towards the future. Better than any other material adapting to the wall, wool, by its richness, by its preciousness, was alone capable of being faithful to the spirit of Sonia Delaunay – Jacques Damase.

Sonia Delaunay, The colors of abstraction, 17 Oct – 22 Feb 2015, Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, then at the Tate modern, London, from 15 April – 16 August 2015. 

Sonia Delaunay – Contrepoint 1968 , collection Galerie Hadjer 

THE FABRIC OF MODERNITY

6 DECEMBER 2019– 8 MARCH 2020

MATISSE, PICASSO, MIRÓ … AND FRENCH TAPESTRIES