Composition X

Delaunay was born in the Ukraine but lived most of her life in Paris. With her husband Robert Delaunay, co-founded the Orphism art movement, an offshoot of Cubism noted for its use of strong colors and geometric shapes. She is also known for breaking down traditional distinctions between the fine and applied arts as an artist, textile designer, stage set designer, and printmaker, all of which gained her worldwide attention. Delaunay described the thought process behind her art: 

About 1911 I had the idea of making for my son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Russian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings.

As many of the women artists exhibited in this show, Delaunay juggled family responsibilities with her art career, never deserting her role as mother and wife while pursuing her career in art. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964, and in 1975 was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor.