Biography

Delacroix studied at the Paris Academy and was a student of Pierre Narcisse Guérin, who taught him classicist painting. But Delacroix was an admirer of the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, whose style he mainly embraced in his own work. He also took his cue from the work of the French painter and graphic artist Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault or from Venetian painters and English plein air painters such as John Constable and Richard Parkes Bonington. Delacroix visited the English landscape painter John Constable in England in 1825. Delacroix maintained friendships with the Polish composer and pianist Frederic Chopin and with the French novelist George Sand. The artist often drew his motifs from literature. Authors such as Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Walter Scott and George Gordon Noël Byron were influential for him in this regard.

In 1827, lithographs for Goethe's "Faust" were created. Or he was inspired by the history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. His early major work entitled "Dante and Virgil in Hell" was written in 1822 and is now kept in the Louvre. It was presented and celebrated to the public at the Paris Art Salon in the same year. On the other hand, his painting entitled "The Massacre of Chios", created in 1824, sparked controversial discussions. Critics and audiences were bothered by Delacroix's bright colors and his free and dramatic style of expression, which went against the classical French painting tradition. Delacroix's most famous painting is entitled "Freedom Leads the People to the Barricade" and was created in 1831. In it, the artist processed his impressions of the July Revolution. In 1832 he went on a long journey to North Africa. The experiences and impressions there expanded his motivations, from which he benefited for the rest of his life.

Delaunay-Terk studied in Saint Petersburg, Karlsruhe and Paris. She settled in the French art metropolis for a year. There she married the art dealer Wilhelm Uhde in 1908. But the marriage didn't last long and divorce followed. Not long afterwards, in 1910, she married the French painter, theater decorator and leading representative of Orphism Robert Delaunay. This connection resulted in a fruitful artistic collaboration. In 1913 she collaborated with the French poet Blaise Cendrars. Together they wrote the first simultaneous book entitled "Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France".

Sonia Delaunay-Terk and her husband created light and color paintings. She was inspired to do this by the works of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gaugin. She also dealt intensively with the color aesthetic theories of the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul. Sonia Delaunay-Terk developed the idea of simultaneousism, which she also implemented and further developed in her works. In this way the title "Prismes électriques" was created in 1914. In 1961, an untitled color lithograph was created showing semicircles and squares. In the same year she created a gouache on wove paper as a composition of squares. This artistic idea was then also used in her designer works of theater decorations and costumes.

In 1968, among other things, she designed the ballet "Danses Concertantes" by the Russian composer Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky. Sonia Delaunay-Terk also creates fabric designs, for example for the French actor and author Jean Poiret. With her style, Sonia Delaunay-Terk pioneered the movement of geometric abstraction. She was one of the important representatives of abstract painting in France. In 1975 she was awarded membership in the French Legion of Honor. The following year she generously donated her graphic work to the Center Georges Pompidou. Her works also include the painting "Bal Bullier", "Costume Studies" and the color lithograph "Grande Icone I.".
- IMDb mini biography by: Christian_Wolfgang_Barth