Published in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, on view at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery from February 23–July 7, this book presents a richly crafted tribute to Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979), pioneering avant-garde artist, designer, and entrepreneur, whose boundary-breaking approach is echoed in the volume’s interdisciplinarity and its inspired design. The catalogue showcases groundbreaking research that unifies the artist’s timeless oeuvre across mediums, and demonstrates Delaunay’s innate versatility and willingness to create without material limitation using her unique language of light and pure color. Textiles, fashion, interiors, tapestries, and more are highlighted across essays by leading international scholars that give new insight into Delaunay’s strategies of self-promotion, entrepreneurial endeavors, legacy-building efforts, and vast network of collaborators.

The editors, Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis, in conversation with Geoffrey Ripert, will discuss the book’s scholarly and creative foundations as well as the shared process of bringing Sonia Delaunay’s art to life with award-winning graphic designer and book creator, Irma Boom.

The talk will be in English. This event is free with RSVP. Click here for tickets.

Waleria Dorogova is an independent art historian, curator, and a specialist in the work of Sonia Delaunay. After having worked internationally in the field of art and fashion history, including at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Goldsmiths, University of London, she organized the exhibition Maison Sonia Delaunay at Kunstmuseen Krefeld in 2022. Dorogova is currently guest curator at Bard Graduate Center for Sonia Delaunay: Living Art and holds a PhD from the University of Bonn.

Laura Microulis is research curator at Bard Graduate Center, New York and co-curator of Sonia Delaunay: Living Art. With a focus on the material culture of the long nineteenth century, her published work has examined the recovery of institutional histories, the nature of patronage relationships, and the narrative life cycle of objects and interiors. In 2021, she was part of the curatorial team responsible for the traveling exhibition, Majolica Mania: Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States, 1850–1915, and co-edited the award-winning three-volume exhibition catalogue. She holds an MA and PhD from Bard Graduate Center.

Geoffrey Ripert is a doctoral student in art history at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. His thesis focuses on the taste for marble objets d’art in eighteenth-century France (1700-1815). He was curatorial associate in charge of decorative arts at the Frick Collection, New York, from 2016 to 2019. He studied art history at the Sorbonne Paris IV, the EPHE (École pratique des hautes études) and the École du Louvre. He is the recipient of the 2023 Burlington Magazine Scholarship, and from 2024 to 2025 will be Anne L. Poulet Fellow at the Frick Collection. In the fall 2023, Ripert was a Villa Albertine resident.

Credit Illustration

1- Photo  Sonia Delaunay, © Florence Henri

2- Exhibition catalogue for Sonia Delaunay: Living Art: New York, Bard Graduate Center, 2024.