Sonia Delaunay-Terk

Sonia Delaunay - Terk-Studies in Karlsruhe and Paris

Sonia Delaunay-Terk was born on 14 November 1885 in Gradischk (today Hradysk in the Ukraine) in the Russian Empire. Her birth name of Sarah or Sophia Ilinitchna Stern was changed following adoption by her uncle to Sonia Terk; in the respective literature, she is also to be found as Sonja Delaunay. The daughter of a Jewish-Russian family, Delaunay-Terk spent her childhood with her uncle and adoptive father in St Petersburg, and at the age of 19, she went to study in Germany at the Karsruhe Art Academy, but left prematurely to follow the call of the artist’s city of Paris. Instead of continuing her academic education, Sonia Delaunay-Terk wandered through the numerous galleries and museums of the Seine metropole, and found inspiration in the increasingly emerging avant-garde, with her early work revealing Post-Impressionist and Fauvist influences. She showed her first pictures in the gallery of the German art dealer Wilhelm Uhde in 1908, with the marriage to the homosexual gallery owner that same year serving primarily to secure her residence permit. 

The desire for something new in art

Through Wilhelm Uhde, Sonia Delaunay-Terk came into contact with Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and above all Robert Delaunay, whom she married following her divorce in April 1910, and the young couple soon became the centre of the Parisian art scene. They both encouraged mutual discourse and supported each other in their experiments with light and colour. In 1912, her reflections gave rise to Orphism (named after the mythical singer Orpheus), or the “simultaneous principle”, a further development of Cubism which was concerned with opposing “pure music” with “pure painting”. Whilst Robert Delaunay turned to painting, Sonia mixed the boundaries between painting and handcraft. This made the public reception of her work difficult for a long time as craft was considered a secondary art form. However, it was exactly that handwork which earned the Delaunays a living, for when the financial support from Sonia’s family fell away due the Russian Revolution, she paid for herself and her husband by designing clothes. 

Great success into old age

Sonia Delaunay-Terk designed many costumes and stage sets for the ‘Ballet russes’ which brough her such great popularity that she was able to open an atelier for women’s fashion in Madrid during the First World War. Her painting style also paved the way to Geometric Abstraction. She was involved with Dadaism and decorated her house with poems – a principle she also transferred to her clothing designs, which were decorated with texts or paintings, and her participation in the Art Déco exhibition in Paris in 1925 was a great success. Following the death of her husband, Sonia Delaunay-Terk worked with Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. In 1964, she was the first female artist to hold a retrospective at the Louvre, and in 1976 she bequeathed here complete print oeuvre to the Centre Georges Pompidou. 

Sonia Delaunay-Terk died in Paris on 5 December 1979. The asteroid (6938) Soniaterk bears her name.