La prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France)

Sonia Delaunay (Sarah Stern)

Gradizhsk, Ukraine (ancient Russian Empire), 1885 - Paris, France, 1979

Blaise Cendrars (Frédéric-Louis Sauser)

Le Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1887 - Paris, France, 1961
  • Date: 
    1913
  • Technique: 
    Typography, watercolour and stenciling on Parchemin paper
  • Descriptive technique: 
    Printed text with ten typographies and watercolour on skin for the cover
  • Dimensions: 
    Displayed: 199 x 35,5 cm / Cover: 23,7 x 20,2 cm
  • Edition/serial number: 
    Deluxe edition 0/4
  • Category: 
    Work on paper, Drawing, Graphic art
  • Entry date: 
    2006
  • Register number: 
    DE01844

As a couple, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, who visited Spain and Portugal between late 1914 and 1921, created a movement derived from Cubism, known as Simultaneism. The Museo Reina Sofía holds two works by Sonia Delaunay, both very representative of the movement; Dubonnet, from 1914, and La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France), one of the copies of the fold-out book she did in collaboration with Blaise Cendrars in 1913, which the authors dubbed “the first simultaneous book”. By means of its special format, Delaunay’s colourful motifs (triangles, rectangles and concentric circles) develop in parallel with Cendrars’ poem, in which the author evokes a range of times and places, and recounts his rail journey from Moscow to the Sea of Japan in 1904. Both creations, Delaunay’s pictorial work and Cendrars’ text, end with allusions to the Eiffel Tower, as a symbol of the modernity of urban life.

Paloma Esteban Leal

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