Erté

The book presents a vast selection of works by Erté, emphasizing in particular those from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s – by far the most original and successful of his entire career. By following the three main spheres that characterised the artist’s production (fashion, theatre and the series of the alphabet and numbers), it offers a broad perspective on his oeuvre. Writings by Valerio Terraroli, curator of the exhibition, retraces the career of an artist capable of capturing, tastefully and with irony, the shifting nature of fashion and its most dazzling and luxurious inventions. Always posed between modernity and exoticism, these creations materialise impossible elegance – at times verging on the affected – and cynical, feral qualities of the femme fatale, equally suited to the cinema and to theatrical choreography. Following is an essay by Alessandra Tiddia that places Erté in relation to two Italian artists, Alberto Marini and Umberto Brunelleschi, this bearing witness to a shared European ambience as well as a supremely elegant visual language, distinguished by highly characteristic stylistic and decorative elements.