Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay, born Sarah Elievna Shtern in the Russian Empire in 1885 and active until her death in 1979, was a French painter, textile designer, fashion designer and set designer who spent most of her career in Paris and co-founded the Orphism art movement with her husband, Robert Delaunay. Her practice combined geometric abstraction with the integration of furniture, fabric, wall coverings and clothing into art, evident in works such as her 1911 patchwork crib quilt, the 1912-1913 painting Bal Bullier and her 1913 illustrated edition of Blaise Cendrars's La prose du Transsiberien. In 1964 she became the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre, and she was named an officer of the French Legion of Honour in 1975.