Artwork Details
12-3/8 x 8-1/4 in.
Mark DescriptionIinscribed lower right: No. 39 Signed and Dated verso: Sonia Delaunay 1914
Accession NumberThe Robert and Traude Hensel Collection
CopyrightRobert and Traude Hensel Collection; donated to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1992
In 1914 Delaunay painted an 8 x 8 foot canvas entitled Electric Prisms. Her subject was the colored halos created by electric street globes, newly installed on Boulevard St. Michel in Paris. This piece is one of hundreds of small, numbered drawings in pastel, watercolor or gouache that Delaunay devoted to this modern, colorful theme.
Light, fragmented prismatically into geometric patterns of pure color, was the primary interest of Sonia and her husband, French painter Robert Delaunay, in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War I.
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