Sonia Delaunay: Simultaneity

Chronology

I am having a lot of success now, but America doesn't know it yet.

November 14, 1885: Sonia is born Sarah Stern to a Jewish family in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, now part of Ukraine. Robert Delaunay is born the same year in Paris.

1890s: The orphaned Sonia spends her childhood in St. Petersburg with her maternal uncle, Henri Terk, who adopts her, and gives her his last name.

— Letter from Sonia Delaunay to Rose Fried, 1958

1904: Sonia studies painting at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts.

1905: Upon arriving in Paris, Sonia takes classes at the Acad mie de la Palette, where her classmates include Am d e Ozenfant and Andr Dunoyer de Segonzac.

1909: She marries “for convenience” the collector, gallery owner, art critic, and homosexual Wilhelm Uhde.

1910: Through Uhde’s gallery, she meets the Comtesse de Rose and her son Robert Delaunay, prompting her divorce from Uhde and soon after her marriage to Robert. The artist couple move to 3, rue des Grands-Augustin, and become known for their Salons for the artistic and literary avant-garde. Robert would be best known for his contributions to abstraction and color theory in his depictions of the Eiffel Tower, and Sonia would become equally influential in blending the visual arts with textiles and fashion design.

1911: Their son Charles is born, for whom Sonia creates a an abstract patchwork blanket, now in the collection of the the Mus e National d’Art Moderne. The