The carpet titled 'Varèse', named after the composer Edgar Varèse (Paris, December 22, 1883 - New York, November 6, 1965), immediately refers to the founder of the simultaneism in music. The Kandinsky-Archives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris preserve correspondence proving the friendship between Varèse and the Delaunay couple.
According to Varèse, rhythm is based on the idea that sound objects are subject to the physical forces of attraction and repulsion in space. Rhythm is thus the result of matter, force and energy, and is caused by the interaction of several independent and irregular levels.
About the artwork
About the artist
Sonia Delaunay-Terk (Gradizhsk, November 14, 1885 - Paris, December 5, 1979)
Education:
1903-1904: Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, Germany
1906: Académie de la Palette, Paris, France
Sonia Delaunay-Terk was a Ukrainian-French artist, who married Robert Delaunay. Her work includes paintings, textile designs and set designs.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was little collaboration between the fashion world and artists. Sonia Delaunay is an exception. Together with her husband Robert Delaunay she developed the simultanism. This was a theory of color based on scientific research, which showed that some colors, when put next to one another, seemed to have a different color, or that a combination of colors could seem to creature an impression of movement. This inspired the couple to work with contrasting and discordant colors. In her work, Sonia Delaunay made much use of bright colors. The Russian folk art inspired her to work with such colors, but the colors of the simultanism were quite innovative. She obtained these bright colors through the reflection of a prism or streetlights. In her life she has experimented with many styles, including orphism, cubism and abstract art. She painted together with her husband until his death. In 1931 she joined the group Abstraction-Création. She was the first female artist who was already honored during her life with a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964, and in 1975 she became an officer in the French Légion d'honneur.
The idea of a fourth dimension, popularized by the book "Science and Hypothesis" (1902) by Henri Poincaré, had a huge impact on the collective imagination of the early twentieth century. Writers and artists such as Paul Valery, Henri Matisse, Guillaume Apollinaire, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, all of whom were friends of Varèse, were sensitive to the novelty of the scientific concepts presented.
Sonia and Robert Delaunay relied on this concept to develop simultaneism. With the disk or the series of circular shapes (1912-1913), Delaunay discovered the dynamic power of color.