Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern

The Tate have recently launched a retrospective which surveys the whole career of Sonia Delaunay. The exhibition emphasises the way Delaunay broadened her practice, incorporating textile, fashion, interior and graphic design and collaborating with poets in addition to painting. It also suggests that she was one of the first artists to develop herself into a broader brand and thereby laid a path for many artists later in the 20th century and beyond. For me though, a somewhat sadder story emerged.

Delaunay, and her husband, are best known for their work with what was then cutting edge colour theory, exploring how colours affect their neighbours to provide a heightened appearance and to evoke light. Often known as Simultanism, the development of this style of fractured reality is a joy to behold, starting out tentatively and become bolder and bolder. Delaunay was fascinated by the innovations of the years before the first World War and in particular the new forms artificial light was taking and new dance crazes that swept across Europe. These give her paintings a real pulsating light, especially the Electric Prisms and the ballrooms.

After the outbreak of war, the Delaunays found themselves in Spain and Portugal for some years and the local culture helped enrich Simultanism further - the painting had a relationship with music and dance from the beginning and being exposed to Flamenco led to Delaunay's paintings becoming more intimate and with more intricate movements.

About this time, the fallout from the Russian Revolution hit the Delaunays. Sonia had been supported by her godparents and then suddenly their estates were seized and her allowance stopped. This is the point at which shed diversified, starting fashion labels and collaborating with manufacturers. Although she had dabbled with clothing design before, this escalation wasn't a point of principle or a grand idea, it was simple economic necessity.

The Tate show covers this period well, perhaps too well. A huge room is packed with fabric samples, clothes and assorted designs with a huge table of samples, a wall of bolts of fabric rotating like conveyor belts and much more. Personally I found it overwhelming and difficult to take in. Perhaps this was the point as it showed both the depth and breadth of Delaunay's creativity.

After the financial crash at the end of the 20's, Delaunay shut down her businesses and returned to painting. To me, this is where the story saddens. All her work after this point, with the exception of the Paris pavilion paintings which were collaborations, becomes heavy and static; all the light was gone and all the joy was gone. She was still very obviously interested in abstraction, geometry, colour and rhythm but the paintings have lost their life. It does make me wonder whether the Tate have got their message back to front. They rightly celebrate Delaunay's incredible versatility and bravery but perhaps they should also use her as a cautionary tale; a story of someone losing the heart of their work by spreading themselves too thin and a warning about the commoditisation of artists.