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European artist Sonia Delaunay was a pioneer in the abstract art field. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964. In addition to fine art, she was a textile and furniture designer with her own design studio, Casa Sonia. Sonia and her spouse, Robert Delaunay, were the creators of Orphism (also known as Orphic Cubism), an art movement that played with time and space and scrutinized color and the effects of light. Importantly, Sonia Delaunay was associated with the Cercle et Carré artist group, a collection of abstract artists founded in Paris in 1929 by Pierre Daura, Joaquín Torres García, and Michel Seuphor. Currently at the Schneider, work by the artists involved with this group can be found in the traveling exhibition, Cercle et Carré and the International Spirit of Abstract Art, which was organized and originally shown by the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia.
One of Delaunay's many artistic ventures was into the world of art cars when she participated in an exhibition in 1967 called "Cinq voitures personnalisées par cinq artistes contemporains", which translates to "Five Cars Personalized by Five Contemporary Artists". This exhibition was organized as a fundraiser for medical research. For this exhibition, Delaunay was the designer of a geometric pattern on a Matra 530 that included an optical effect that caused the car to look light blue while in motion, despite its red and dark blue sections, as to not distract other drivers on the road. However, she invented the idea much earlier. One of the earliest examples of the art car, shown above, was created for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925. Art cars are vehicles that have had their appearance modified by their owners, sometimes called "Cartists". It is a subculture that took the interest of many pop culture greats such as Janis Joplin, John Lennon, the hippie group The Merry Pranksters, and even The Muppets. Interestingly, many of these early uses of the art car were associated with hippie counterculture, as Joplin and Lennon's cars were both painted in psychedelic designs, and the aforementioned Merry Pranksters were a group of hippies that drove around the Pacific Northwest spreading poetry and their alternative lifestyle. Extravagant art cars are featured at the free-expression Burning Man event, an American cultural phenomenon that encourages "radical self-expression". Consider how these artistic endeavors were happening at the same time -- with Sonia Delaunay's participation in the Paris art show in 1967 and the hippie movement in the United States taking off in the late 1960s. Though it cannot be said if they directly influenced each other, the existence of artistic congruence in different parts of the world is monumental. If you would like to read more about Sonia Delaunay and her participation in art car culture, click on the first link below, and read about the influence of motorcars on feminism at the second link. And of course, come see a costume design created by Sonia Delaunay in the current exhibition, Cercle et Carré and the International Spirit of Abstract Art, on view at the Schneider until August 8th.
https://thevintagent.com/2026/01/17/sonia-delaunay-and-the-invention-of-the-art-car/
https://hyperallergic.com/how-the-motorcar-helped-fuel-feminism/
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