Gianluigi Ricuperati’s choice of artists suggests a renewal of the pictorial tradition of the avant-garde of the early 20th century, with names such as the American artist Patricia Trieb or French painter Anastasia Bay. In look n°19, a 2020 work ‘Danse Bleue’ by Bay, in all its Matissian flavour, becomes one with the dress that bears its name. In the marvellous long evening dresses developed from the Italian artist Alessandro Teoldi’s late 80s fabric works, a succession of hands, arms and bodies of fabric that originally evoked crowded airport transits become a sensual and liberating hug.
For the project’s more figurative artists, there is a clear connection with the emotional, visual and empathic dimension of the body, where figures resonate with colour and composition. Examples include look n°11, a sequinned watercolour minidress lifted from sensual, textural paintings by Guglielmo Castelli, canvases by Luca Coser and the sophisticated compositions with scattered figurative elements by the German artist Malte Zenses. Garments are arranged like three-dimensional spaces, hosting the playful pictorial digressions of the Italian artist and writer Sofia Silva, who’s works are printed and embroidered across the unforgettable skirt suit ensemble in look n°16.
As a practice that leads to the creation of an image comprised of pigment, painting is an exercise made of time and layers, and this couture collection corresponds to that approach by embodying the slow and precious elaboration of workmanship, as in the case of look n°21, an inlaid coat with 150 different fabrics that arose from the 2019 painting ‘I Beati Verdi’ by Andrea Respino. The materials deposited on the canvas like large colour fields indicate surfaces to be averted and made three-dimensional, as exhibited in outfits born from the works of Rwandan artist Francis Offman whose pieces, in their understated minimalism, imply fragile references to a faraway world.
If Offman’s work evokes landscapes and mnemonic links with places and situations, the pure abstraction of the German artist Kerstin Brätsch is instead an energetic test of painting with acid and scratchy contrasts, as they appear in the dynamic, optical composition ‘The If’ (2010).
In Piccioli’s moving gallery, one also finds less literal interpretations of certain artists’ work, in garments equally capable of returning the intention and poetry of the original works nonetheless. Consider look n°44, a feather-studded minidress inspired by the American textile artist Joel S. Allen, or n°63, where the abstract photographic works of Chinese artist Wu Rui were interpreted by the House’s seamstresses as a sequinned dress framed by a scrunched, printed cape.