All sales are subject to 888 Auctions’ Terms and Conditions of Sale. Bidding is available by live in-house bidding and absentee. A 20% buyer's premium is added to the hammer price of each lot. PAYMENT BY, BANK DRAFT, CERTIFIED CHEQUE OR WIRE TRANSFER ONLY. The auctioneer and 888 Auctions shall have the right to withdraw any item at any time for any reason and to default any sale in the event of an error or dispute. The auctioneer will also have full discretion to reopen the bidding, cancel the sale or re-offer and resell the property. Should a dispute arise after the auction, our sale record is conclusive.
Oil on canvas abstract expressionist painting, featuring concentric solar circles. Signed and attr. Sonia Delavnay (Ukrainian-French, 1885-1979) on lower left corner on one of the rays of the sun. 22 x 19 in (55.9 x 48.2 cm), verso of canvas has signs of white paint. Sonia Delaunay’s innovative explorations of color and form began with a quilt she made for her son in 1911 that would spur a breakthrough in the history of abstraction. She had moved from Moscow to Paris at age 20, where she first encountered Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, inspiring her to push further toward non-objective art. Along with her husband, Robert Delaunay, she developed a bright blend of Cubism and Futurism that would be dubbed Orphism by critic Guillaume Apollinaire in 1910—though Delaunay preferred the term “Simultaneous Contrasts”. In addition to painting, she created textiles as “exercises in color,” under the Maison Delaunay label, even creating costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1964, Delaunay became the first living woman to be given a retrospective at the Louvre.