Thunderbird, 1973

<p>Sonia Delaunay, a French artist born to Jewish parents, is renowned for her vibrant use of colourful geometric patterns. She studied drawing at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts in Germany before moving to Paris in 1906. In Paris, her painting style evolved, embracing the vivid colours of Fauvism. Along with her husband, Robert Delaunay, pioneered a fusion of Cubism and Neo-Impressionism, a style later named Orphism by poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Throughout her career, Delaunay applied this new aesthetic to her paintings, textiles, and designs and in 1964 she made history as the first living female artist to have a retrospective at the Louvre.</p>