Sonia Delaunay

Jacques Damase

"For liveliness and inventiveness alone, Delaunay deserves a place in the art history books.... Her designs vibrate on the pages." -Vogue

Révolution Typographique

Stanley Baron

This volume, which was written with full access to her journals, sketchbooks, and other personal records, and includes some 200 illustrations, many never before published, traces Delaunay's life beginning with her childhood in Russia and art studies in Germany. She moved to Paris in 1905 and immediately felt at home. Once she married, Delaunay kept in the background though she was producing numerous works of art.

The Life of an Artist

Between 1920 and 1930, Russian-born artist Sonia Delaunay produced some of the most striking and original fabric designs of modern times. Her brightly colored geometricas fresh today as thenwere the rage among fashionable circles in the Art Deco era. French publisher and art historian Jacques Damase provides a definitive record of this unusually talented artist's contribution to commercial design. 180 illus. 104 in color.

Fashion and Fabrics

The Russian-born artist Sonia Delaunay, who with her husband, Robert Delaunay, was a leading light of the Cubist splinter group Orphism, branched out after the First World War into a distinctive career of her own. Between 1920 and 1930, a decade full of activity and success, she produced some of the most striking and original fabric designs of modern times. She was the inventor of abstract design for fabrics, and her materials--brightly colored and filled with geometric patterns--were the rage among fashionable circles in the Art Deco era. Delaunay made imaginative waistcoats for Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon, Rene Crevel, and other Surrealist poets. She dressed Gloria Swanson and various French film stars, the unconventional socialite Nancy Cunard, and the wife of the Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer. She also designed interiors in collaboration with the Paris architect Mallet-Stevens and created costumes for the early films of Marcel L'Herbier. Her fabrics were sold by Liberty's in London and many of the most exclusive department stores in New York. Jean Cocteau and Blaise Cendrars wrote about her fashion designs, and her decorative scarves are known to have had an influence on the work of Paul Klee. Jacques Damase, the French publisher and art historian, is intimately familiar with all of Delaunay's original designs and fabric samples. In many cases both the design and the sample still exist, and this is the first time most of them have been photographed. Damase has written an appreciation of Delaunay, and has also assembled a representative selection of writings by her contemporary admirers and critics. The result is a definitive record of this unusually talented artist's contribution to commercial design. These dazzling, exciting designs are artworks in themselves; the fact that they had a practical purpose makes them even more admirable.

Jacques Damase

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