New York, New York — She was one of the most influential French artists of the 20th century and a major exhibition devoted to this pioneer of Modern and Abstract Art is currently underway in New York City. No less than 200 of her powerful and colorful works are on display at the Bard Graduate Center on the upper West Side. Entitled Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, the show marks the first major exhibition devoted to Sonia Delaunay in the United States since 2011, and includes works that are being shown on this side of the Atlantic for the very first time. A pioneer of abstraction, she embraced myriad mediums including design, paintings, fashion and the decorative arts all coming together to create a unique art de vivre à la Delaunay. The decorative arts of Delaunay are being showcased as well for the artist considered that fashion, textile and design were indelibly and profoundly connected  to her abstract endeavor. Among the works on display are a toy chest from 1913 and a spectacular horizontal mosaic conceived in 1954. The Ukrainian-born French artist is known for her boldly bold use of colorful geometric patterns and as a star of the Parisian avant-garde movement. She would later explain that her love of colors emerged during her childhood in her Ukrainian village of Gradizhsk, then in the Russian Empire, and where she was born in 1885, from where she retained indelible memories of colorful peasant dress. The artist would die in Paris in 1979 at the age of 94. 

The Parisian gallery, Galerie Zlotowski, which has showcased major players on the Modern Art scene since 1998, has loaned six works for the show, characteristic of the dialogue initiated by the artist herself between art and the decorative arts. The loan is a precursor to the major exhibition the gallery will be holding in Paris in its Left Bank rue de Seine venue in the autumn of 2024. Both of the exhibitions have been curated by Laura Microulis and Waleria Dorogova, Delaunay experts. Among the works on loan from the Parisian gallery is a proposition for a catalogue cover for her 1916 Stockholm exhibition as well as a superb gouache from 1925, Groupe de Femmes (Group of Women), evoking the artist’s conception of clothing in the middle of the 1920s when she opened in Paris her Maison Sonia. The show is running in New York until July 7th. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette. Bard Graduate Center, 38 West 86th Street, NY New York,  http://www.bgc.bard.edu Galerie Zlotowski,  20, rue de Seine – 75006 Paris http://www.galeriezlotowski.fr