ʺIt is the heartbeat of active people”, declared Robert Delaunay on the sense of proportion of people with harmonic sense of colors. According to Robert and Sonia, the human eye perceive colors as vibrations, rhythms, depths and variations – similar to music. The work of the Ukraine artist clearly reflects her intense relation to music and poetry.

Sonia Terk was born in 1855 in Gradiesk and died in 1979 in Paris. She grew up in St. Petersburg and went in 1903 to the Academy in Karlsruhe. Two years later, she finished her education at the Academié de la Palette in Paris.
The painter made her debut in the Parisian gallery of Wilhelm Uhde, her first husband, in 1908. After she met there the younger artist Robert Delaunay, Uhde accepted a separation and she married Robert in 1930. This ʺlove at first sight” was the union of two remarkable artistic personalities. They shared the same ideas and often provided the creative spark one to the other. Their Parisian studio became in the heady twenties the center of artistic avant-garde.

As early as 1912, their first simultaneous compositions appeared. The representations are characterized by simultaneous reproduction of various spaces and different times. Colorful abstract color spots suggest movement by circular shapes and segments. She transferred this design principle from painting to designs of various objects: carpets, book covers, fabric for clothes, vests and shawls were examples for the convergence of art and life.

Sonia developed the Simultané fabric pattern, which was woven in a company in Lyon. Her fashion creations, designed in her own fashion studio, had a significant influence of the Haute Couture of the twenties. Sonia Delaunay-Terk was a sought-after designer also for interior decorations, theatre costumes and stage design and film.