November 14: Delaunay’s Orphism Art Movement

Sonia Delaunay (Sarah Ilinitchna Stern), the first living woman artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre (1964), was born in the Ukraine on this date in 1885. In Paris after 1905, she founded, with her husband Robert Delaunay, the Orphism Art Movement, an offshoot of Cubism that emphasized pure geometric abstraction and bright colors. Sonia Delaunay also made clothing, quilts, furniture, wall hangings, and other works that dissolved borders between art and design and brought abstract elements into fashion and jewelry design. She was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1975 and published an autobiography, We Shall Go Up to the Sun, in 1978.

“Sonia effortlessly emerged as a leading figure in [the fashion] world, liberating color, movement and form from two dimensions and uniting them off the canvas in beautiful things that she created for beautiful women to wear. . . . The designer and her designs were photographed frequently, for portraits taken by her husband and for glamorous black-and-white ads that featured models lounging poolside or strolling with parasols in the mid-afternoon sun. Her name became synonymous with luxurious scenes of female independence, a notion that was quickly transforming Europe.” —Emily Nathan, aftnet.com

JEWDAYO ROCKS: Nina Rachel Shapiro Gordon, co-founder of Veruca Salt and a solo singer-songwriter, was born in Seattle on this date in 1967. To see her band in action playing “Volcano Girls” (she’s the blonde), look below.