Guest lecture Prof. Dr. Margarete Zimmermann 17.01.19
David Bowie and Sonia Delaunay - at first glance, the two seem to have nothing in common, and yet the British pop icon wore a costume inspired by the French avant-garde artist with Ukrainian-Jewish roots during a performance in 1979.
In her lecture "Texts and Textiles. Sonia Delaunay and the avant-gardes", the Berlin Romance philologist Prof. Dr. Margarete Zimmermann shed light on the role of this painter and textile artist within the international avant-gardes of the first half of the 20th century, highlighting completely different forms of cultural transfer, migration and network formation. She not only attempted to map Sonia Delaunay's movements in geographical and social spaces - from the Ukraine to St. Petersburg, from Karlsruhe to Paris and Berlin - but also looked at her movements 'between' the arts and different languages, materials and sign systems. The lecture focused in particular on Sonia Delaunay's internationally successful 'Simultanmode' in the 1920s, which has retained its place in cultural memory to this day.