Alongside her husband Robert, Sonia Delaunay was at the heart of the Parisian avant-garde in the early twentieth century. Born in Ukraine in 1885 Delaunay moved to Paris in 1905 having completed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. It was at this time that she met her second husband Robert, a fellow artist. The two developed a new style of painting coined Orphism, by their friend the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. Orphism – or Simultanism to the Delaunays - is a form of Cubism that is based in pure abstraction and the use of bold colour.

A multi-faceted artist, Delaunay is not only celebrated for her painting, but also costume design and textiles. In the 1920s Delaunay designed a huge variety of costumes for the highly progressive avant-garde theatre productions of Tristran Tzara such as ‘Le Coeur à barbe’ (1923) and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes’ ‘Cleopatre’ (1918).

The synergy between Delaunay’s varying artforms is evident in her uniformed visual language: clear geometric patterns an simplified blocks of colour. In ‘Deux femmes, esquisse’ the two women’s forms are elegantly redacted to their purest form. The screen and draped curtain behind the women ensure they are not fully in the realms of abstraction, while simultaneously referencing Delaunay’s design sketches from this period.

Delaunay’s drawings from this period are held in high regard, as they reference both her design and fine art. A number of these drawings are now in such public collections as Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (‘Simultaneous Dresses (Thee Women, Forms, Colours)’, 1925) and Louisiana Museum of Art (‘Costume for the Rio Carnival’, 1928).