The Simultaneous

Continuing its commitment to highlighting Sonia Delaunay after an exhibition in the spring of 2021 at the gallery, as well as a notable presentation at Art Basel in June 2023, Galerie Zlotowski presents Sonia Delaunay, la Simultanee, the third highlight dedicated to the pioneer of abstraction, who devoted 70 years of her life to her creations.

Abstract artist, fashion designer, design designer, graphic designer, successful entrepreneur, godmother of abstraction, explorer of mediums, Sonia Delaunay had, almost simultaneously, all these facets. This frenzy can be explained by a conception of art that goes beyond the traditional framework of drawing and canvas to conquer life itself. Sonia Delaunay has constantly abolished the boundaries between visual art and decorative art, while remaining faithful to the principles of “simultanism”, a conception of abstraction focused on the interaction of colours, which she developed with her husband Robert in the 1910s. The exhibition presents emblematic works of this colourful abstraction, recognisable among all, with works on paper and paintings on canvas (from 1907 to 1979, the year of the artist’s death). But Sonia Delaunay, la Simultanee ventures further, by showing pieces emblematic of this appetite for innovation and exploration, which makes the artist’s career so original: fashion drawings of course, but also book covers, tapestry projects, graphic design essays, lithographs and, even more unexpected, mosaics and playing card designs!

The first section of the exhibition focuses on the unparalleled collaboration that united Sonia and Robert Delaunay, who married in 1910. It shows the works of the Spanish and Portuguese stays (1914-1918), a blessed period for Sonia despite the tragic context of the war, made of meetings with local artists and intense work, inspired by the light of the Iberian Peninsula. The “simultaneism” of the 1910s does not reject figuration but extracts geometric shapes from bodies, faces or objects that organize color combinations. Beyond this ideal of creating as a duo, Robert and Sonia never ceased to support each other. While Sonia launched into the marketing of clothing in Paris in the early 1920s, Robert Delaunay executed a series of portraits of ladies dressed in Sonia Delaunay’s creations, as many tributes to his wife’s inventiveness in terms of fashion. Conversely, after Robert’s premature death in 1941, Sonia led a fierce fight to ensure that her husband found his rightful place as a pioneer in the history of abstraction that was then being written, organizing exhibitions, making donations to institutions and publishing numerous works.

The second part of the exhibition is devoted to drawings related to the fashion that dominated Sonia Delaunay’s work in the 1920s. It is titled after the poem by Blaise Cendrars, a dear friend of Sonia, On the dress she has a body (1913), the inversion of the body and the dress underlining the revolutionary character of the Delaunay style. This vision of a redefinition of fashion is confirmed by Guillaume Apollinaire’s comment, “You have to go see in Bullier, on Thursdays and Sundays, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Delaunay, painters, who are in the process of reforming the costume there.” It was certainly material reasons that pushed Sonia Delaunay to move from avant-garde and experimental clothing to the Haute Couture entrepreneurship that would impress even Gloria Swanson, the star of Cecil B. de Mille’s films at MGM. As she lost her income from her uncle’s properties with the Russian revolution of 1917, Sonia Delaunay became, in spite of herself, an entrepreneur by creating the Casa Sonia store in Madrid (1918) and then the Maison Sonia in Paris (1925). She would not stop designing textile patterns until late in her career, notably for the Dutch house Metz & Co. The Delaunays were strategists in order to assert their place in their time and demonstrate that they were stakeholders in the changes underway. Robert theorizes: “We see a simultaneous rising fashion wave that corresponds to a desire. Fabrics, advertisements, furniture are undeniably evolving towards living color.”

Sonia’s gouaches show that fashion, invested by “simultaneism”, is the coherent extension of an artistic conception connected to life. This frequentation of “less noble” arts will nevertheless cost Sonia Delaunay her place in the history of art for a time. However, more recent exhibitions have challenged this hierarchical and dated vision. A turnaround is palpable in the retrospective Les Couleurs de l’Abstraction at the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2014) and at the Tate Gallery (2015), confirmed more recently with Sonia Delaunay at the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen (2022) and Living Art at the Bard Graduate Center in New York (2024). All these exhibitions celebrate the audacious crossings of boundaries that characterize Sonia Delaunay’s career. Thanks to them, we realize that Sonia Delaunay has succeeded in creating a living and vibrant art that operates a convincing synthesis of simultaneist arts.

The third part of the exhibition focuses on Sonia Delaunay’s pictorial production in the post-war period. She is a rare case in the history of women artists in the 20th century who achieved success and recognition during her lifetime, albeit at an advanced stage in her career. Gradually, the “woman of Robert Delaunay” established herself, placing herself at the heart of the post-war avant-garde movements. In the 1960s and 1970s, major museum exhibitions highlighted her work: she was the first woman to exhibit during her lifetime at the Musée du Louvre in 1964. And three years later, in 1967-68, a major retrospective was devoted to her at the Musée d’Art Moderne. Within the exhibition, the work that embodies this renaissance is the large gouache Rythme couleur from 1961, shown in an exhibition at the innovative Galerie Denise René.

This piece is the original version of a stencil produced for this same exhibition. If its abstraction is geometric and always organized by color, the forms are free, rhythmic, never totally clear. Far from the exactitude of the contours typical of concrete art, for which the pictorial gesture must disappear and subjectivity dissolve, the very application of the flat areas of color is palpable, as if the artist were asserting her presence. This is a characteristic that applies to all of Sonia Delaunay’s work: her presence in the work. The trace of the hand that applies the color is obvious and color modifications are sometimes visible. The series of color rhythms from the 1970s presented here are therefore emblematic of this freedom, which results in a radical synthesis of forms, as if Sonia Delaunay were going to the limits of the possibilities of “simultaneity.” But this programmatic character of an abstraction pushed to its limits is combined with an assumed imperfection, which always recalls the “profession” of the artist and his hand in full action.

The last part of the exhibition is devoted to works that do not fall within the field of drawing or painting strictly speaking. These are playful and surprising projects, in which Sonia Delaunay ventured throughout her long career. The diversity of Sonia Delaunay’s production is astonishing. Publishing, poetry illustration, graphic design and advertising would fascinate her, to the point, for the latter field, of carrying out projects not requested by the company for which she was “advertising”. The significant production of projects linked to publications would begin very early, with the catalog cover projects of 1916, then that for the famous Album n°1 (1916) and the magazine Ararat (1917).

Sonia’s inclination towards more accessible and visible media also responds to her desire to collaborate with her allies and friends. Illustration or fashion allow her to connect with poets she admires and loves deeply, such as Blaise Cendrars or Tristan Tzara. And to attach herself to them, what could be simpler than illustrating or dressing them? This need for proximity, for cooperation with chosen beings, by affinities and affection, is the common thread of all the “off-limits” initiatives that Sonia Delaunay undertakes, as her feelings guide her production.

Sonia remained active until her last breath in December 1979. Her last gouaches are striking. She had never been so fully present in them. We can see the trembling of the old lady’s hand in the outline of the squares of this checkerboard, from the collection of Jacques Damasse, executed in 1979. The black seems to want to invade the other colours which, for once, seem on the point of being absent…

October 3 – November 15, 2024

Galerie Zlotowski

20 rue de Seine 75006 Paris

Galerie Roger-Viollet

6 rue de Seine 75006 Paris

A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) created an original and evocative body of work, drawing on the indigenous, popular and modern imaginations of a country in full transformation.

In Paris, in the 1920s, she put her iconographic universe to the test of cubism and primitivism, before initiating, in São Paulo, the “anthropophagic” movement, advocating the “devouring” by Brazilians of foreign and colonizing cultures, as a form of both assimilation and resistance.

His brightly coloured landscapes then give way to unusual and fascinating visions, before a more openly political dimension appears in his paintings from the 1930s. The dreamlike gigantism and almost abstract geometry of his latest compositions only confirm the power of a work anchored in its time and always ready to renew itself.

Filling a lack of recognition of the artist in Europe and presenting some new aspects of his work, this retrospective invites us to the heart of modern Brazil and its divisions between tradition and avant-garde, centers and peripheries, learned and popular cultures.

October 9, 2024 – February 2, 2025 

MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG

19 rue de Vaugirard 75006 Paris 

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Considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, but also one of the most misunderstood, Leonor Fini (1907–1996) has been the subject of a passionate reevaluation in recent years. Multiple auction records, increasing representation of her painting in museums… the Minsky Gallery is celebrating this important moment in the history of her reception through three exhibitions organized under the curatorship of Richard Overstreet, Leonor Fini’s beneficiary. At the same time, she is also receiving the honors of the Centre Pompidou’s major exhibition on surrealism.

As a first part, the Minsky Gallery is organizing a solo show by Leonor Fini including masterpieces from the 1920s to the 1990s. Some twenty paintings that reveal the extraordinary palette, between symbolism and surrealism, between dream and lucidity, of Leonor Fini, including two rare self-portraits from the 1940s and 1950s that are exceptionally presented to the public. Born in Argentina before growing up in Trieste, Italy, this “scandalous” person, according to André Breton, hated being labeled! In three successive exhibitions, until January 15, 2025, the Minsky Gallery, which has represented her since 1978, offers a beautiful exploration of her extravagances. We thus discover Nebbia (1982), an enigmatic canvas that recalls a foggy theater scene (for which Leonor Fini worked on the costumes as well as the sets or posters…).

Two pearl and tulle masks also open a door to her grand intimate ball, where the Italian aristocrat and painter Stanislao Lepri, partner of the trouple formed with the scholar Constantin Jelenski, plays a leading role. From November 7, the Minsky gallery will present them together in a second exhibition, before showing their works on paper in a final hanging.

September 3 – November 5, 2024

GALERIE MINSKY

37 rue Vaneau 75007 Paris

A collection of collages, drawings and postcards from the 1950s to Ellsworth Kelly’s last collaboration with the Revue Cahiers d’Art in 2012: this exhibition, designed in close collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, invites us to discover Kelly’s research into form, colour and composition on paper.

The small format of the works provides a unique opportunity to capture the intimacy of Kelly’s artistic process. Spanning seven decades, these works illustrate the artist’s love of line, form, and the beauty of nature’s shapes. Kelly’s postcards highlight the artist’s mastery of a strong aesthetic in a concise composition. Often sent to family and artist friends, these works reflect Kelly’s deep attraction to the colors and poetic forms of everyday life.

The collages express Kelly’s innovative exploration of formal and chromatic relationships. More than that, they demonstrate his constant experimentation with form and abstraction. Ellsworth Kelly was inspired by the connection between abstraction and nature to draw shapes and colors. His deep attachment to natural forms is reflected in his plant studies, with their subtle and delicate lines. Through these clean lines, Kelly manages to embody and feel the essence of organic forms.

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was born in Newburgh, New York. In 1948, he moved to France, where he discovered many classical and modern works of art. In 1951, Kelly’s first solo exhibition was organized by the Galerie Arnaud in Paris. In 1954, Kelly decided to return to New York. In 1973, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized his first retrospective. Subsequent exhibitions took place in major museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The connection between Ellsworth Kelly and Cahiers d’Art is a continuation of the artist’s attraction to the famous magazine, collecting issues while he was still a young American student in Paris. The Revue Cahiers d’Art was renowned for covering the different periods of art history, from prehistory to modern art, and this editorial choice had appealed to Kelly because it echoed his artistic approach and his collection of Native American antiquities.

This relationship was sublimated by the rebirth of Cahiers d’Art in 2012, when the first publication of the new edition of the magazine was dedicated to him, thus concretizing the artist’s reunion with his Parisian youth and the history of Cahiers d’Art. By publishing his catalogue raisonné, Cahiers d’Art celebrates Kelly’s importance in the history of modern art.

June 6 – September 30, 2024

CAHIERS D’ART

14-15 rue du Dragon 75006 Paris

Dialogues of oriental antiquities

The Department of Oriental Antiquities hosts ten major works from the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York, currently closed for comprehensive renovation work. The Louvre was thus able to design with the Met an unprecedented dialogue between these two collections which will take place within the permanent rooms of oriental antiquities.

Dated between the end of the 4th millennium BC and the 5th century AD, the Met’s works, exceptional guests, introduce remarkable correspondences with the collections of the Louvre, that is, together they form a pair brought together for the first time on this occasion, or that they complement each other due to the specificities linked to the history of each of the two collections. From Central Asia to Syria, often passing through Iran and Mesopotamia, these collection dialogues allow us to (re)discover these multi-millennial works and the stories to which they bear witness in a different way.

February 29, 2024 – September 28, 2025

MUSEE DU LOUVRE

AILE Richelieu et Aile Sully, niveau 0

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