Sonia Delaunay

Delaunay's abstract painting began with a textile: a patchwork cot blanket she sewed for her baby son in 1911, its blocks of colour reminding her of Cubist painting. From there she and her husband Robert developed Simultanism, and she carried it straight onto fabric, designing printed silks for the Lyon manufacturer Bianchini-Férier and dresses from her own Paris boutique in the 1920s. Her colour-block coats, scarves and even a painted Citroën showed abstraction living on bodies and streets, not just on canvas.