Mariano Fortuny (designer)
Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo ( born May 11, 1871 in Granada, † May 3, 1949 in Venice) was a Spanish artist Universal; among others, fashion designer, painter, sculptor, architect, interior designer, engineer and inventor.
Life and work
Mariano was the son of the Spanish painter Marià Fortuny (1838-1874) and his wife Cecilia de Madrazo (1846-1942), who also came from a family of painters, was born. When his father died in 1875, the family moved to Paris, where his grandfather Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz lived as a painter. Mariano Fortuny showed talent and received his education from 1876 to 1885, first with James Tissot, then to Paul Baudry, Emmanuel Frémiet, Giovanni Boldini, Alfred Stevens and Jean -Léon Gérôme.
In 1889, the family settled in Venice at Palazzo Martinengo. There Fortuny presented in the large gallery works of his father and his own out. His mother had there also compiled an extensive collection of material of velvet, brocade, silk, taffeta and satin from Venice, Ghent and from the Orient. The particular shades and combinations of the coated with foliage or floral designs with gold and silver -embroidered fabrics and their production provoked Fortuny's curiosity. In 1892 he bought the Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei (now Palazzo Fortuny ) on Campo San Beneto which he made the center of his work. He set up a painting and photo studio, a carpentry shop, textile printing and dyeing, as well as a tailor, where he employed a dozen workers.
In collaboration with his French wife Henriette Negrin (1877-1965), an expert in natural dyes, invented Fortuny new methods of textile dyeing the pressure on fabrics and tapestries. In his designs for women's dresses, he took on, among other forms of antiquity. Typical of the Delphos dress and the Knossos scarf is the ultra-thin, iridescent in the light permanently pleated silk satin, the preparation of Fortuny in 1909 he patented in Paris. He designed this type of dress in 1905 successfully. In addition to his workshop in San Marco 1919, the company Società Anonima Fortuny, a silk printing on the island of Giudecca.
In 1911 Fortuny presented his materials on the exhibition Exposition internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in the Louvre and had thus a great response. Shortly thereafter, he opened a boutique in Paris, and later came with offices in London, Madrid and 1929 in New York City to where his models were sold. In the 1920s and 1930s were Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Luisa Casati, and the United States Isadora Duncan, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham and his customers. As an interior designer, he set up the house of Consuelo Vanderbilt in Art Nouveau and Art Deco style, just like the salons of Marie -Laure de Noailles and Dina Galli and the playing hall of the new hotel Excelsior in Paris. Fortuny reported as the inventor of more than fifty patents, employed since the turn of the century with the indirect lighting effects in the theater ( Fortuny GmbH AEG Berlin), designed theater sets and costumes, and was also still present until 1942 on all biennials in Venice as a painter.
Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo died of a heart attack and was buried in the cemetery Campo di Verano in Rome.