Electric Prisms 1914

Sonia Delaunay made this painting, Electric Prisms, at a time when artists were trying to capture movement and modernity on a flat surface. The canvas is alive with colour; hues butt up against each other, creating a sense of vibration, a kind of visual buzz. Look at how she's applied the paint, you can almost feel the brushstrokes, the texture of the pigment on the canvas. The circles, dissected and reassembled, aren’t perfect, they wobble and breathe. It's as if Delaunay is saying that the process of seeing, like the process of painting, is never fixed or still. The colours feel like they are in conversation with each other, like a dance, with an almost musical quality. Much like the way that Hilma af Klint used abstraction to convey spiritual ideas, Delaunay uses shape and form to explore the energy of modern life. Both artists invite us to consider art as a form of exploration, a way to embrace ambiguity and multiple interpretations.