Market in Migno

Private collection.

Canvas, oil.

Delaunay wrote, “Endlessly diverse images are promised to the one who knows how to appreciate colour relationships, the influence of one colour on another, their contrasts and dissonances.” The canvas in the style of orphism offers the viewer just such images. Familiar scenes are more likely to be those of fairs than markets, represent rhythms of colour decomposition into holiday segments. At this period of creative searches, the artist went farther away from figurativeness towards abstraction and geometry. At that time, she was closely engaged in the phenomenon of “simultaneous contrast”, when colours look different depending on those adjacent. In 2002, this work by Sonia Delaunay was sold to a Russian collector for 4.5 million euros.