When Sonia Delaunay-Terk and her husband, Robert Delaunay, created their first completely abstract or nonobjective paintings, the term "simultaneous contrast" described the harmonious and lyrical effects they achieved with pure color. Their style, "Orphism," alludes to the Greek god and musician Orpheus. Delaunay-Terk's investigations into simultaneity include her internationally acclaimed designs in the applied arts, ranging from textiles to advertisements to book bindings.

Comprised of brightly colored arabesques, concentric circles, triangles, and rectangles, Delaunay-Terk's pochoir illustrations for Blaise Cendrars's poem and its radical format have made this a landmark in the history of the modern book. The poet and the artist conceived of this project as the first "simultaneous book." When closed, the accordion-folded volume can be slipped into a wrapper. Opened out vertically, the format facilitates the contrast of the darker themes of the poem with the vibrant dynamism of the illuminations that accompany it.

Written as a stream of consciousness, Cendrars's poem alternates between his memories of a train trip across Siberia in 1904 and thoughts of his girlfriend, Jehanne. Complementing the rhythms of the poem, Delaunay-Terk interspersed patches of color with the poet's staggered text, printed in twelve different fonts. The poem and the illustration both end with references to the Eiffel Tower and the ferris wheel, two architectural marvels of Paris at that time, further symbolizing modernity and the experiences of simultaneity that urban life provided.

After _Prose_, Delaunay-Terk returned to book illustration intermittently throughout her career. Although she had made figurative intaglio prints between 1905 and 1910, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that she experimented with screenprint, aquatint, lithography, and etching in her signature style. Of her approximately one hundred fifty prints, nearly one-third are book illustrations.