Pioneering 20th-century abstract artist Sonia Delaunay was known for ignoring the distinction between fine art and applied design. Her body of work encompassed not only paintings and prints but also book illustrations, women’s and men’s fashions, costumes for theater and dance, film sets, wallpaper, furniture and interior decor. More than an expression of her prolific talent, this varied output was her way of erasing the boundary between life and art.
Born Sara Elievna Stern in 1885 to a working-class Jewish family in Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), she was adopted as a child by a wealthy maternal uncle in St. Petersburg, who saw to her well-rounded education. There, she picked up the nickname Sonia.
At the age of 18, she left Russia for Germany to study painting, and in 1905, she landed in Paris, where she enrolled in art school. She soon dropped out but continued creating art, producing canvases strongly influenced by Fauvism. Following a brief marriage to gallery owner Wilhelm Uhde, she married fellow artist Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) in 1910. After the birth of her son, Charles, in 1911, she crafted a patchwork crib cover that she considered her first truly abstract piece.
No matter the medium, Delaunay’s passion was color. She and her husband were the main exponents of Orphism, a branch of Cubism defined by abstract compositions and bright shades. They saw their creations as experiments in Simultanéisme, or Simultanism, a color theory based on the work of scientist Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889), who studied the ways in which a given hue can look different depending on the ones around it.
The Delaunays noted that certain pairings seemed to generate a vibration in the eye of the beholder. They felt that this movement captured the dynamism of modern urban life. The couple generally expressed the ideas underpinning Simultanism in their work with flat, overlapping panes of color. In fact, Sonia’s cradle cover melded their tenets with the traditions of Russian-peasant patchwork (also a big Constructivist inspiration).
Seeking to integrate Simultanism into all aspects of life, she designed other abstractly patterned furnishings for their home, which had become a gathering place for the avant-garde, and she worked the designs into their clothes, too, which she and Robert would wear throughout the city and to dance halls — behavior that today would likely be described as performance. In addition to performance, Sonia’s work presaged many other avant-garde movements, such as kinetic art and Op art.
After the upheavals of World War I and the 1917 Russian Revolution, Delaunay retooled herself and opened a business. Keeping her devotion to color juxtaposition front and center, she launched a fabric and fashion atelier where she created textiles, wearable pieces, interior decor and furniture, sometimes collaborating with cabinetmaker Adolphe Chanaux.
Clients who may have found an abstract painting intimidating or inaccessible could enjoy the bright pattern on a cloche-and-scarf set Delaunay created or the striped handbag she designed. In this way, she brought her art into their everyday lives. Her colorful abstract design on a textile or rug could very well have been applied to one of her canvases and hung on a wall or vice versa.
While many women artists of the period were herded away from the fine arts and toward crafts (think Anni Albers), Delaunay was able to do it all. And what’s also so appealing about her oeuvre, to contemporary eyes, is the sense that Delaunay pursued everything — be it painting or fashion or costuming or furniture or graphic design — with equal vigor, without making distinctions between mediums.
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Sonia Delaunay 1930 Compositions Couleurs Idees Pochoir #7
By Sonia Delaunay
Located in Bristol, CT
Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) Planche 7 pochoir from the portfolio "Compositions, couleurs, idees" 1930 Image Sz: 12"H x 10"W Frame Sz: 15"H x 13"W w/ gilt bamboo frame
Gouache
"Mysteries of the Carpathians"
By Andrii Kovalyk
Located in Edinburgh, GB
This painting immerses you in the mesmerizing stillness of an autumn night, illuminated by the gentle radiance of a full moon. Golden trees, like intricate lacework, stand gracefull...
Paper, Gouache
$1,158
H 20.08 in W 25.2 in
Vintage Mid Century Modern Figurative Oil Painting - Crimson Conversation
By Brita Hansson
Located in Bristol, GB
CRIMSON CONVERSATION Size: 51 x 64 cm (including frame) Oil and gouache on board A bold and expressive mid-century modernist figurative composition, painted in oil and gouache onto ...
Oil, Board, Gouache
Orange Grove Landscape
By Dorr Bothwell
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Orange Grove Landscape, 1941, gouache on illustration board, 14 inches x 18 inches (image), 22 x 26 inches (framed) signed and dated lower right, newly framed with museum glazing ...
Gouache, Board
$3,000
H 29 in W 22.5 in
Chicago Jewish Modernist Judaica Painting Simchat Torah WPA Artist Israeli Flags
By Alexander Raymond Katz
Located in Surfside, FL
This has young ISraeli pioneers dancing with the flag as typical of works of the late British mandate Palestine era early state of Israel. Genre: Modern Subject: Figurative (stained glass style) Medium: Mixed media gouache on paper Hand signed lower left Alexander Raymond Katz, Hungarian / American (1895 – 1974) Alexander Raymond Katz was born in Kassa, Hungary, and came to the United States in 1909. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 1920s, he worked as a director of the Poster Department at Paramount Studios. He was appointed the Director of Posters for the Chicago Civic Opera in 1930. During the Great Depression, notable architect Frank Lloyd Wright urged Katz to become a muralist. In 1933, he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago. In 1936, he painted the mural History of the Immigrant for the Madison, Ill., post office. Katz’s works were included in various exhibitions and now are part of several museum collections, including those of the Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Jewish Museum, New York. His murals, bas-reliefs and stained glass designs adorn more than 200 Jewish synagogues in the United States. Katz and other Jewish artists in Chicago who expressed Jewish and Biblical themes were inspired by the artist Abel Pann (1883-1963). Pann, who is regarded as the leading painter of the Land of Israel, exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago in 1920. Early in his career, Katz began to explore the artistic possibilities inherent in the characters of the Hebrew alphabet. He developed aesthetic and philosophical interpretations of each letter and became the leading innovator and pioneer in the field of Hebraic art. Katz applies this concept in the woodcut Moses and the Burning Bush. Hebrew letters appears in Moses’ head, his cane and inside the flame. The initial of Moses’ name crowns his head. The letter in the flame is the first letter of the name of God. A combination of images and Hebrew letters appeared commonly in illustrations of the scene Moses and the Burning Bush in the Haggadah, the book of Passover. The symbolism of the burning bush corresponds to the motifs of A Gift to Biro-Bidjan. Among the fourteen participating artists were notable Chicago modernists Todros Geller, Mitchell Siporin...
Paper, Gouache
$375
H 6 in W 8 in
"049 - Plein Air-Red Rocks, CO" (2022) By Judd Mercer, Gouache Painting
By Judd Mercer
Located in Denver, CO
Judd Mercer's (US based) "049 - Plein Air-Red Rocks, CO" is a gouache painting depicting a large red rock. Artist bio/statement Judd Mercer is a contemporary landscape painter and ...
Paper, Gouache
$375
H 6 in W 8 in
"005 - Plein Air-Englewood, CO" (2022) By Judd Mercer, Gouache Painting
By Judd Mercer
Located in Denver, CO
Judd Mercer's ( US based) "005 - Plein Air-Englewood, CO" is a gouache painting depicting a peaceful landscape with lush green grass and melting snow. Artist bio/statement Judd Merc...
Paper, Gouache
$1,450
H 30 in W 26 in D 3 in
Mid Century Modern Original Tapestry Design for Jean Lurcat, 1973 by Dirk Holger
Located in Baltimore, MD
This painting is gouache on board by tapestry designer Dirk Holger. Born in 1939, Holger worked in Jean Lurcat’s atelier in Munich, Germany. Lurcat (1896-1966) was a famous French pa...
Gouache
"Spring Silence Under the Moon"
By Andrii Kovalyk
Located in Edinburgh, GB
In this piece, I set out to evoke the quiet mystery of a spring night illuminated by moonlight. A glowing full moon hovers above, casting golden highlights that shimmer through the s...
Paper, Gouache
"Orchard under the Full Moon"
By Andrii Kovalyk
Located in Edinburgh, GB
In this painting, I aimed to capture the quiet magic of a moonlit orchard. A radiant silver moon rises above distant hills, casting a soft, ethereal glow and scattering stars like pe...
Paper, Gouache
$1,200
H 14.75 in W 16 in
Orange Ship in Harbor, Impressionist Gouache Painting by Alexandre Sacha Garbell
By Alexandre Sacha Garbell
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Alexandre Sacha Garbell, French (1903 - 1970) Title: Orange Ship in Harbor Year: 1958 Medium: Gouache on Paper, signed Image Size: 6.25 x 7.75...
Gouache
$881
H 4.5 in W 3.5 in
Cosmos, The Brightest Light, Early 20th Century English School Artwork
Located in London, GB
Gouache on paper Image size: 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches (8 1/4 x 11 1/2 cm) Original frame
Paper, Gouache
$950
H 10 in W 14 in
Mod Abstract Expressionist Modernist Edward Avedisian Color Field Art Gouache
By Edward Avedisian
Located in Surfside, FL
Edward Avedisian Gouache Watercolor Abstract Painting on Arches paper. (notebook cover not included) Unsigned, (bears name verso in pencil.) Dimensions: 10" X 14" Late 1970s, early 1...
Watercolor, Gouache
Untitled
By Sonia Delaunay
Located in New York, NY
This work is offered by CLAMP in New York City.
Lithograph