The war in Ukraine continues and Odesa has been the cause of concern for quite a while now. On the news and on social media we have seen local people filling bags with sand and putting them around statues or creating steel barricades on roads like the one leading up to the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, one of the most iconic landmarks in the city and a symbol of Odesa's rich heritage (dating to 1887, it is Ukraine's oldest opera house).
The key seaport town, a hub of cosmopolitan life known for its architecture designed by Italian artists and for its rich cultural life, remains under threat as the Russian army is trying to advance towards the city, while Russian warships remain posted near the city's Black Sea shoreline. Military analysts state it is unlikely the Russian army will assault it as the city, founded in 1794 by Russian Empress Catherine the Great, has an important place in Russian culture and history.
While some believe that the historical importance of the city, once considered the crown jewel of Imperial Russia, is sparing it from the invasion, speculations say Russian soldiers refused to bombard it (but there isn't any evidence towards this theory). Odesa remains a strategic asset as it is situated on the Black Sea and taking it would cut the rest of the country off from the sea, leaving it landlocked. So far there have been shelling on the outskirts of the city, while Mykolaiv, about 80 miles away, was attacked and, on Friday a Russian military strike on a barracks in the southern Ukrainian town left dozens of soldiers killed.
Among all the horrors of the war it is difficult to think about art, but there is an artist who was born in Odesa and who can inspire us through her colours and geometrical shapes to stay positive, Sonia Delaunay.
Born in 1885 to a Jewish Ukrainian family, Sonia Illinitchna Stern moved as a child to St. Petersburg, Russia, and then studied art in Germany and Paris. Yet her childhood memories of her hometown remained vivid, in particular her recollections of the colours and bright costumes of peasant weddings.
Her interest for bright colours developed after she married in 1910 Robert Delaunay, a painter and researcher into simultaneity. Art critic Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term "Orphism" to describe their version of Cubism. The term referenced the poet and singer of ancient Greek mythology Orpheus, and hinted at the fact that they prioritized colours that created dynamic movements, rhythm, motion and depth.
Sonia then explored the possibilities of "Simultaneism", a strand of Orphism. Scientist Michel Eugène Chevreul identified the phenomenon of "simultaneous contrast" in which colours look different depending on the colours around them. Moving from this principle, Sonia created chromatic innovations, fluid circular shapes interlocking semi-circles and creating fascinating effects.
Sonia Delaunay's first experiments in simultaneous paintings occurred in 1912-13 and were followed by her first dresses in 1913 and her designs for simultaneous books in collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars. Her dresses were mixes – almost collages – of geometrical and irregular forms, materials and colours. More experiments suspended between art, fashion and interior design followed, with Delaunay producing blankets, lampshades and curtains.
Around the '20s she created fifty patterns for a silk manufacturer and began a collaboration with Dutch department store Metz and Co. that sold her fabrics for fashion and home decoration. Her tissues simultanés radically changed the garments or interior design objects in which they were employed. Delaunay also established a printing workshop, called Atelier Simultané and experimented with wool and silk combinations and embroideries.
Her textile designs were characterised by stripes, zigzags, geometrical figures and spirals in bright colour combinations or in neutral shades with geometric designs in metallic, wool and silk threads.
Delaunay often designed costumes for performances and films: in 1926 she collaborated with Robert Mallet-Stevens on two avant-garde films, René Somptier's "Le P'tit Parigot" (The Small Parisian One) and Marcel L'Herbier's "Le Vertige" (The Living Image).
In both films Mallet-Stevens created the sets, while Delaunay worked on the costumes, in the same way Delaunay's fashion and automobile were modelled in 1925 at the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs against the backdrop of Robert Mallet-Stevens' Tourism Pavilion. The collaboration between the two creative minds worked particularly well as the two shared an aesthetic understanding and created visual correspondences between surface decorations and designs.
The two artists and designers continued these dialogues in the films they worked on: in "Le P'tit Parigot", a serial in six parts, starring Georges Biscot, the characters are presented in a modernism backdrop. The striped textiles for the armchairs and the decorative motifs on the walls are extremely modern and clever and the film features a number of dance scenes focused on the figure of the modern woman, depicting her freedom of movement through shorter skirts and patterned catsuits by Delaunay.
The dance performance included in the film originated at the Licorne Gallery in Paris and is performed by Romanian dancer Lizica Codreanu for which Delaunay designed the Pierrot-Éclair costume for "Le P’tit Parigot".
The film was a flop when it came out, but Delaunay's patterns and abstractions and Mallet-Stevens' sets perfectly conveyed frenetic action, creating multiple correspondences between architecture, interior design and fashion.
In 1937 Delaunday created for the Palais de l'Air at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, a painting entitled "Hélice" (Propeller), measuring almost twenty-three feet long and ten feet high and featuring a three-blade propeller anchored by a series of circles of various bands of color. Mechanisms, including gears and levers, metal disks, and wires in vibrant and vivid shades surround the propeller. This work in the air travel pavilion celebrated major advancements in transportation.
Russian missiles and warplanes have so far brought terror, destruction and death from the sky over Ukraine and a more direct Western intervention to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been the foremost request of Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, in order to protect its skies from Russian attacks, but NATO rejected the call to avoid the risk of a wider European war. A peaceful resolution may be difficult to come, but let's hope we will somehow see it soon, so that we can go back dreaming about planes and their mechanisms, rather than fearing planes and their bombs. Till then, let's use Delaunay's colours and geometries to protect our minds from the brutality of the war.
Comments