Butterfly

Designed by Sonia Delaunay around 1970, the artistic rug Butterfly reflects the artist’s lifelong exploration of color, rhythm, and geometric abstraction. Across the composition, angled planes of pastel pink, warm yellow, grey, and black intersect with bold linear motifs, creating a sense of movement that feels both structured and spontaneous.

Delaunay approached textiles not as decoration but as an extension of painting. The Butterfly rug embodies her theory of “Simultanism,” where contrasting colors placed side by side create a visual vibration across the surface. In wool, these shifting planes of color become almost architectural, transforming the floor into a living field of form and light.

Produced in France as part of the Artcurial editions of the 1970s, the rug belongs to a series that reintroduced Delaunay’s textile designs to a new generation of collectors. These editions translated her earlier explorations of abstract geometry into large-scale woven works intended to inhabit modern interiors.

In Butterfly, Delaunay transforms the floor into a field of color and movement. The shifting planes and graphic lines echo the visual energy of her paintings while responding directly to the surrounding architecture. The result is a work that feels both structured and alive, carrying the spirit of her modernist experiments into the space of everyday life.