Hélice, Décoration Pour Le Palais De L’Air, Exposition Internationale Des Arts Et Des Techniques Dans La Vie Moderne 1937

Sonia Delaunay made this painting, Hélice, for the Palais de l’Air at the Exposition Internationale in Paris. It’s oil on canvas, but she's trying to suggest the visual experience of modernity: speed, industry, mechanical objects. You can see that in the propeller, the namesake of the piece. The painting is not only the image of a machine but an emulation of one, as if it were made by the same impersonal forces that created mass production. Delaunay belonged to a generation of artists who sought to reflect the changing world through abstraction. Here, she takes the visual language of engineering and marries it to pure color and form. It shows the influence of the Bauhaus, as does her use of industrial motifs to evoke a sense of dynamism and progress. Ultimately, Delaunay asks us to reconsider the boundaries between art and design, skill and technology, hand and machine.