Essay by Katherine E. Goebel, Assistant Editor

Sonia Delaunay, along with her esteemed husband Robert Delaunay, helped to found the movement of Orphism. This faction of artists largely focused on the depiction and relation of bold colors and shapes within a composition. Orphism simultaneously moved away from a noticeable aim of perspective and naturalism, seeking instead compositions that speak through a language of prismatic hue and delineated swerves of paint. The subject matter is devoid of real figures, opting instead for anthropomorphic, and sometimes even geometric, shapes that allow viewers to approach the overall image any way their eye is compelled.

The artists strove for an optical appeal from a dialect of color that is universal. In fact, Delaunay's line of work extended to textile and stage set designs due to its ability to captivate the eye. There is no objective truth in the work and there is no regional focus within the composition. While speaking at the Sorbonne in 1927, Delaunay stated, "If there are geometric forms, it is because these simple and manageable elements have appeared suitable for the distribution of colors whose relations constitute the real object of our search, but these geometric forms do not characterize our art" (Cohen 207). More broadly, there is no single intention—rather, the viewer is to interpret the arrangement of form and function as he or she sees best, particularly in regards to the way the colors interact with each other.

The juxtaposition of prisms within her works recalls Michel Eugène Chevreul's study of the color wheel along with the Pointillist movement, made famous by such artists as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. In Composition with Semicircular Shapes (1970), we see a composition that has seemingly been split into four quadrants by intersecting curvilinear lines. Delaunay employed a wide range of color, from light grays to harsh blacks, expressing her interest in color range. The consecutive, randomized strokes of color are both optically enticing and meaningfully subjective. One becomes lost traveling from luminescent swerve to swerve, the result of which is an absorbing, self-activating animation of the print. Delaunay enjoyed a great deal of success during her lifetime, in the latter portion even being commissioned to complete designs for costumes, furniture, automobile exteriors and murals. In fact, Italian modern painter Alberto Magnelli told her in the early 1960s "she and Braque were the only living painters to have been shown at the Louvre," (qtd. in Baron and Damase 170) an honor typically reserved for those artists within the traditional art historical canon.