Sonia Delaunay, French 1885-1979- Le Guépard, 1972; gouache, signed lower right, inscribed no 1918 lower left, 65x44cm (ARR) Provenance: Private Collection, London. Note: Accompanying this lot is a certificate of authenticity from Richard Reiss...

Sonia Delaunay, French 1885-1979- Le Guépard, 1972; gouache, signed lower right, inscribed no 1918 lower left, 65x44cm (ARR) Provenance: Private Collection, London. Note: Accompanying this lot is a certificate of authenticity from Richard Reiss. This work is no.1918 in the artist's archive. This work is a preparatory design for the lithograph 'Le Guépard' by the twentieth-century artist Sonia Delaunay, and recalls a number of similar prints produced by the artist around 1970, towards the end of her career. This piece, through its depiction of an assemblage of bold geometric shapes in bright, contrasting colours, exemplifies Delaunay’s signature style. Delaunay also produced art across a range of media, focusing particularly on paint and print, and thus this piece, as a gouache design for a lithograph, neatly encapsulates this aspect of the artist’s work. The features of this work illustrate the influence of a number of key artistic movements – to which Delaunay was exposed whilst living in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century – on the artist’s work. Delaunay’s interest in using a series of flat, geometric shapes to depict the world around her demonstrates the effect of Cubism on her practice, whilst her use of vivid colour suggests the influence of Fauvism espoused by contemporaries such as Henri Matisse and André Derain. In Delaunay’s work we see a confluence of these styles which has, nonetheless, been transformed into something new and unique at the hand of the artist. Indeed, this work is a key example of the movement, labelled 'Orphism', which was pioneered by Delaunay and her husband Robert Delaunay. Orphism was shaped heavily by the colour theory promoted by Pointillists such as Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, and as such can be understood as an exploration of the concept of vision and perception. This approach in general rejected figurative representation in favour of a focus on form and colour, the effects of which are strikingly evident in this piece. Delaunay was a central figure in contemporary intellectual and artistic circles, and received recognition for her work within her lifetime. She was a board member of the Salon de Realités Nouvelles, an association of artists with a focus on abstract art established in 1946. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective at the Louvre, held in 1964, and was awarded the position of Officer of the Legion d’Honneur in 1975. Works by Delaunay are currently held in a number of prestigious international collections, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.