Impressionist and Modern Art

The authenticity of this lot has been confirmed by Richard Riss and is accompanied by a certificate signed by Jean-Louis Delaunay.

Provenance:

The New Art Centre, London.

Gimpel Fils Gallery Ltd., London.

Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Ltd., New York.

B.C. Holland. Inc., Chicago, Illinois.

Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1987.

Lot Essay:

A carefully orchestrated riot of colors, the present study for a Chocolat poster was created by Sonia Delaunay as part of her expansive multimedia career. Executed during the key years of her artistic development, 1913-1914, this work exemplifies Sonia’s exploration of Simultanism, which extended to paintings, collages, textiles, fashion, books, and interiors. The term Simultanism emerged from Sonia and Robert Delaunay's study of On the Law of the Simultaneous Contrast of Colors (1839). Written by Michel-Eugène Chevreul, the treatise demonstrates the sensational optical effects achieved by placing complementary colors next to each other. In this manner, color and rhythm can create a heightened sense of emotional perception and simultaneous states of being. For the Delaunays, these were more than just compelling visual phenomena, but also an artistic method that allowed them to conjure the dynamism of modern life itself.

Born in 1885 in Ukraine to working class parents, Sonia discovered art through her maternal uncle Henri Terk, who adopted her in 1890. Terk was a wealthy member of the Jewish bourgeoisie in St. Petersburg and provided his niece with a privileged upbringing, sending her to study drawing in Germany in 1904 at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts. In 1906, Sonia moved to Paris, where she met Wilhelm Uhde in 1907, an art dealer, critic, and early collector of modernist painting by Picasso and Matisse. They married in 1908, which allowed Sonia to acquire French nationality. It was through Uhde’s gallery that she met the artist Robert Delaunay in early 1909, and to whom she was married in 1910, after an amicable divorce from her first husband. Sonia said about Robert: "In Robert Delaunay I found a poet. A poet who wrote not with words but with colours." (Stanley Baron and Jacques Damase, Sonia Delaunay: The Life of an Artist, New York, 1995, p. 20)

Sonia and Robert orbited in a galaxy of early 20th Century art “-isms,” including Futurism, Dada(ism), Cubism, and Modernism. It was in this context that they conceptualized Simultanism, also named Orphism by their friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Derived from the poet and singer Orpheus in Greek mythology, the name refers to the inherent musical qualities, chromatic scales, flux, and simultaneity conveyed by its practitioners. In 1913, Sonia not only painted several of her chief works on canvas and produced her Simultaneous fashions, but she also made the first Simultaneous book, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, which she created in collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars. 

As part of her multidisciplinary approach to art, Sonia created innovative advertising poster designs for Michelin, Printemps, Zénith, Dubonnet, and Chocolat. Projet d’Affiche ‘Chocolat’ is one such example. The interplay of green, yellow, orange, and blue planes rhythmically placed across the paper moves the eyes upward, to where the word CHOCOLAT dances across the top of the composition. As noted by art historian Gail Levin, “With handwritten letters and curved areas of a variety of colors, the poster used words as images in a formal sense—as abstraction themselves.” (Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925, New York, 1978, p. 19) Composed during a significant time in the artist’s career, the present work reveals Delaunay as an innovator who transcended conventional artistic boundaries, one who saw every medium as an extension of her art.