(b Gradizhsk, Ukraine, 14 Nov 1885; d Paris, 5 Dec 1979).
Russian painter, designer and printmaker of Ukrainian birth, active in
France, wife of Robert Delaunay. She was the youngest of three
children and in 1890 was adopted by her maternal uncle, Henri Terk, a
lawyer in St Petersburg, where she spent her youth. She had early contacts
with Germany, visiting the artist Max Liebermann in Berlin (1899) and
studying drawing with Ludwig Schmidt-Reutter (1863–1909) in Karlsruhe from
1903 to 1905. In 1905 she moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la
Palette. There she met Amédée Ozenfant, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and
Jean-Louis Boussingault. She learnt printmaking from Rudolf Grossmann
(1882–1941). Her early painting was figurative, with frequent references
to van Gogh, Gauguin and the Fauves. The links with Germany continued
after her move to France: she exhibited at the Erster Deutscher
Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, in 1913 and again at the
Galerie Der Sturm in 1920 and 1921.
