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Feb.20,2005 -Feb.27,2005 |
Rene Gruau immortalized
Successful Italian poster child changed world of illustrationby Jennifer Febbraro
Originally Published: 2003-10-19
Rene Gruau seduced the world of fashion with his nuanced colour and his reinvention of the iconography of the simple evening gown. And vice versa, the fashion industry lured Gruau from his humble beginnings as a dreamer of building buildings. Once considered a prodigy of draughtsmanship, Gruau's encounter with the editor for Lidel, a Milanese fashion magazine, would change the course of his future and the marriage of illustration and fashion forever. This month at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, a showcase of Gruau's work will be displayed in his honour as a fashion icon in and of himself.
Gruau's career started at an early age. By 15, he had already published his first fashion drawing with Lidel. But the phenomenal trajectory of his success never reached full throttle until he had moved to Paris with his mother and befriended Christian Dior. Not only did the move to Paris facilitate his work with other prominent newspapers, such as Le Figaro and Marianne, but it also sealed his growing intimacy with the world of fashion, and even during World War II, fashion was not dead. It continued to flourish in Paris under the auspices of fashion magazines like Femina, Silhouettes, and Marie Claire.
But it was after WWII, after Gruau had started to work for the International Textile Review that Gruau's artwork was becoming recognizable. Dior had assigned for him to complete the first drawing of the Miss Dior perfume, a white swan outfitted with a black bow tie and white pearls. Gruau was able to capture the intersection of humour, class, and elegance represented there, and his signature style invented a new language of haute couture. Designers sought him out, as did American publishers, as he soon immigrated to the States, unable to refuse their grand offers, to work with Harper's Bazaar, American Vogue, and Flaire.
It was not long before Gruau became his own celebrity. Filmmakers, watching the relationship between his illustrations and the dramatic increase in sales, rallied his support for their posters for films. The infamous Jean Renoir recruited him for the sassy French Cancan. Gruau then completed the first Lido poster, the Moulin Rouge, Roland Petit's Ballets, and for Les Amants Terribles at the Theatre Montparnasse.
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