Sonia Delaunay was at the forefront of cultural developments in Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Born in the Ukraine in 1885, she grew up in St Petersburg and studied at the academy of fine arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1905 she moved to Paris, thought by many to be the centre of the art world at that time, and she was based there for the rest of her life. She met her husband, Robert Delaunay, in 1909, and they were to live and work together for more than thirty years. Their close circle in Paris included many talented people such as the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, and later Tristant Tzara, Andre Breton, Hans Arp and Marc Chagall.

Sonia Delaunay's instinctive sense of colour can be traced back to her childhood in Russia and the primary colours of the peasant costumes and fairs she would have seen. In Paris, she gradually introduced an element of ‘geometrization' and ‘simultaneous contrast' in to her work, broke with perspective and naturalism and introduced complete abstraction. She often worked with applied or decorative art, famously producing a ‘Cubist' quilt for her baby son after his birth in 1911 (now at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris) as well as collages, bookbindings, boxes, cushions, fabrics, lampshades, dresses, furniture and set designs.

The Adam Gallery is proud to present a selection of lithographs and gouaches by Sonia Delaunay, mainly from the 1960s and 70s, when she was at the height of her career. From the 1950s, Delaunay began to focus on painting, and produced gouaches on paper that she called ‘Rythme coloré', indicating the importance that ‘the infinite combinations of colour' have always had on her work. Her reputation was cemented with a full-scale retrospective at the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1967. In 1969 she was awarded the International Grand Prize for Women Artists by the Salon International de la Femme, Cannes and in 1975 she received the highest cultural accolade possible in France: the Légion d'honneur. Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Tate, London, and Centre Pompidou, Paris.