Robert and Sonia Delaunay's Four Most Important Collaborative Projects

Sonia and Robert Delaunay, a rare artistic couple who collaborated for three decades without toxicity, invented their own abstract art movement, Orphism. Sonia, born Sarah Stern in Odesa, Ukraine, moved to Saint Petersburg at age five and later to Paris, where she married gallery owner Wilhelm Uhde in 1908 before divorcing him to marry Robert. Robert, expelled from schools for his focus on natural history and drawing, apprenticed at a stage design studio and was a Cubist until meeting Sonia, who introduced color to his work. Their movement Orphism, named by critic Guillaume Apollinaire at Robert's 1912 exhibition, combined Fauvism and Cubism using circular forms and bold colors based on chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul's color theory. Sonia launched a fashion career after sewing a patchwork blanket for their son Charles, leading to textile design and her dress-making business Casa Sonia in neutral Spain during WWI, which expanded to interior design and custom-painted cars. In 1937, they participated in the Paris World Fair, where Robert designed the layout and they decorated French pavilions for air travel and railroads with large murals. Starting in 1938, they hosted weekly gatherings of intellectuals in their studio, which evolved into the Réalités Nouvelles salon in 1939, focusing on abstract art. Robert died of cancer in 1941; Sonia continued the salon, which became an abstract art fair still active in 2024.