Rythmes-couleurs

Damase, Jacques.
Delaunay, Sonia.
Rythmes-couleurs.
Paris: Editions de la Galerie Motte, c. 1966. (12088).

Number 30 out of an edition of 100 numbered copies. Signed by the author and artist. Rythmes-couleurs is illustrated with eleven pochoirs (a refined stenciling technique used for making fine limited editions of stencil prints), including the cover.

Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) first met French poet-publisher Jacques Damase (1930–2014) in 1964. He became her publisher until her death and was responsible for the exhibitions of her artworks in all media. Their book collaboration displays their similar styles, featuring her bold colors arranged in a dynamic relationship and his dramatic text, animated with differing sizes of font and perceived vocalization, echoing her arrangement. The shown opening of Damase’s text on art theory reads, “Which is the artist for whom the perfectly straight line or the perfect circle has value? When we speak of line we don’t mean ‘how to draw it straight.’”

Since the 1940s Delaunay worked concurrently on three series of painting and prints called Rhyme sans Fin (Endless Rhyme), Rythme Couleur (Color Rhythm), and Rythme Coloré (Colorful Rhythm). She used composition, re-composition, and divisions of the circle and the square to create a sense of movement. With her husband Robert Delaunay, she pioneered the movement Simultanism, involving the interaction between colors to create depth and movement (simultaneous contrast). She stated, “One who knows how to appreciate colour relationships, the influence of one colour on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely diverse imagery.”

Delaunay was born in the Ukraine, and she often referred to the influence of color and bright costumes of the Ukrainian peasant weddings in her art. She lived her art, and through her childhood remembrances would apply fabric to the walls in her home in Paris. Delaunay explored color dynamism for most of her life, through her paintings, fashion designs, as a graphic artist, and with a collaborative partnership with her husband, Robert. They both believed that color gives depth, simultaneous depth, and that the infinite combinations of color have poetry and an expressive language.

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Rythmes-couleurs