Sonia DELAUNAY ( 1885-1979) Lot n° 8

Sonia DELAUNAY ( 1885-1979) Dancer "417". Madrid 1917. Watercolour on paper, signed and annotated lower right "Sonia Delaunay, SD 417, 1917". 23,3 x 17 cm. Pitting, paper slightly yellowed lower right. We thank Mr Richard Riss for confirming the authenticity of this work, a certificate can be issued at the expense of the buyer. Of Ukrainian origin, Sonia Stern was about twenty years old when she arrived in Paris in 1905. There she discovered the avant-gardes that were revolutionizing art as it was then conceived, and was particularly sensitive to the research of the Fauves and Gauguin on color. With Robert Delaunay, who became her husband in 1910, the couple never stopped searching for the purity of colour and pushing the application of Chevreul's theories on simultaneous contrast, which led them to the roads of abstraction. The work we present here is part of the series The Dancers painted in Madrid in 1917. During her seven-year stay in Spain, Sonia Delaunay was impressed by the movements and costumes of the flamenco dancers. This series gives the artist the opportunity to express her ambition to build movement through colour, and brings her paper dancers to life with a few bright brushstrokes. A work from the same series is kept at the Centre Pompidou in the important collection given by Sonia Delaunay to the institution in 1964. This new dynamic in the Delaunays' art, at the crossroads of painting and dance, was also expressed through their meeting with Serge de Diaghilev, the creator of the ballets. Robert and Sonia created sets and costumes for ballets, definitively annihilating the frontier between colour and movement.