Mariano Fortuny (designer)
Encyclopedia
Life
Fortuny was born to an artistic family in GranadaGranada
Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. His father
Mariano Fortuny (painter)
Marià Fortuny i Marsal , known more simply as Marià Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny, was a Catalan painter...
, a genre painter, died when Fortuny was three years old and his mother, daughter of another famous painter, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta was a Spanish realist painter.He studied painting under his father, Federico de Madrazo, and at the School of the Beaux Arts in Madrid. He was born in Rome, but after 1860 he lived mostly in Paris, where he studied under Léon Cogniet...
, moved the family to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. It became apparent at a young age that Fortuny was a talented artist, as he, too, showed a talent for painting. The family moved again in 1889 to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. As a young man, Fortuny traveled throughout Europe seeking out artists he admired, among them the German composer Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
. Fortuny became quite varied in his talents, some of them including painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, sculpting, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
and even theatrical stage lighting
Stage lighting
Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting. Stage lighting has grown considerably in recent years...
. In 1897, he met the woman he would marry, Henriette Negrin, in Paris.
He died in his home in Venice and was buried in the Campo Verano in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. His work was a source of inspiration to the French novelist Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
.
The life of the Fortuny saga has been depicted in Pere Gimferrer's novel "Fortuny".
Fortuny as a lighting engineer
In 1892, after seeing some of Richard WagnerRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
’s work in Paris, Fortuny traveled to Bayreuth, Germany where Wagner had built a theater specifically designed to put on his operas. He was mesmerized by Wagner’s work and began to paint scenes for his operas when he returned to Venice. In Wagnerian drama, painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
, dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
, and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
all worked together towards a common goal. This affected Fortuny’s outlook and was the inspiration for a brand new type of theater design where the designer and the technician would work together on a project from idea to realization. Fortuny and other followers of this concept believed that one can only improve the quality of a product by having a good knowledge of something’s raw materials and the process of its construction. He also thought that the best type of design was created when the artist knew how to realize the design and controlled all of the steps in the creative process.
Through his experiences with Wagner and the theatre, Fortuny became a lighting engineer, architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
, inventor, director, and set designer. As a set designer, he wanted to create a more seamless way of transitioning from one scene to another other than flying out a backdrop
Backdrop
Backdrop may refer to:* Theatrical scenery* Photography backdrops used in studio photography circa 1860-1920.* Filming location* A pro wrestling move that's also called a belly to back suplex....
and bringing in a new one. He began experimenting with light and different ways to do this in the attic of his palazzo
Palazzo
Palazzo, an Italian word meaning a large building , may refer to:-Buildings:*Palazzo, an Italian type of building**Palazzo style architecture, imitative of Italian palazzi...
in Italy. With his experimentation, he found that reflecting light off of different surfaces could change the color, intensity and other properties of light. He used indirect lighting techniques in his new invention, the Fortuny cyclorama dome, a quarter dome shaped structure of plaster
Plaster
Plaster is a building material used for coating walls and ceilings. Plaster starts as a dry powder similar to mortar or cement and like those materials it is mixed with water to form a paste which liberates heat and then hardens. Unlike mortar and cement, plaster remains quite soft after setting,...
or cloth. The shape created the look of a more extensive sky and Fortuny could create any type of sky he wanted by reflecting light onto it in a certain way. He could even reflect clouds on the backdrop by painting different things on the mirrors that reflected light onto the dome. Fortuny stated that, “Theatrical scenery will be able to transform itself in tune with music, within the latter’s domain, that is to say in ‘time’, whereas hitherto it has only been able to develop in ‘space’”. All that had to be done to change the scenery was that a stagehand had to change the controls for different effects and color mixing. From the same concept of the dome, Fortuny created a lamp that could be used to recreate indoor lighting onstage. The Fortuny cyclorama dome and the Fortuny lamp are Fortuny’s greatest contributions to theatre.
Fortuny as a fashion designer
The achievements that Fortuny is most well known for were made in the field of fashion design. His wife, Henrietta, was an experienced dressmaker who helped to construct many of his designs. They lived in a palazzo in Venice that Fortuny filled with the artwork of his fatherMariano Fortuny (painter)
Marià Fortuny i Marsal , known more simply as Marià Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny, was a Catalan painter...
, art that his father collected, and other art and artifacts that inspired him. He called the palazzo his “think tank” where he had many rooms set up for experiments and inventions as well as rooms for inspiration. Fortuny drew from styles of the past for his fashion design as well, inspired by the light, airy clothing of Greek women that clung to the body and accentuated the natural curves and shape of a woman’s body.
Fortuny rebelled against the style lines that were popular during his time period and created the Delphos dress, a shift dress made of finely pleated silk weighed down by glass beads that held its shape and flowed on the body. The pleating that he used was all done by hand and no one has been able to recreate pleating that is as fine as his or has held its shape like his dresses have for many years. He also manufactured his own dyes and pigments for his fabrics using ancient methods. With these dyes he began printing on velvets and silks and dyed them using a press that he invented with wooden blocks that he engraved the pattern onto. His dresses are seen as fine works of art today and many survive, still pleated, in museums and many people’s personal collections.
Fortuny's palazzo
Nowadays the Fortuny MuseumFortuny Museum
The Fortuny Museum is an art museum in San Marco, central Venice, Italy.The museum is located in the Palazzo Fortuny...
is housed in the Venetian Gothic palazzo in Venice, the former home, studio, showroom and "Think-Tank" of Mariano Fortuny, who acquired it at the beginning of the 20th century. Fortuny invented in his Palazzo the Delphos gown
Delphos gown
This is the Grecian style Delphos gown, created by Spanish fashion designer Mariano Fortuny in 1907....
, a gown based on the ancient Grecian
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
style; and the Knossos
Knossos
Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...
Scarf, a silk scarf also inspired by this civilization. Fortuny also created new methods of dying textiles and well as ways of printing on fabrics. He created the Fortuny cyclorama dome, a stage lighting innovation that could be used to create lighting effects such as a bright sky or a faint dusk; and the Fortuny lamp, for indoor lighting.
Fortuny also is remembered for his brightly coloured pleated gowns. He was an eclectic art-collector of everyday objects and works of art derived from every phase of artistic evolution and an organizer of lectures, concerts and discussions. The museum and the city of Venice organized in 2007 the exhibition Artempo
Artempo
Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art was an encyclopedic art exhibition created for the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice in 2007. It examined the relationship between art and time, and the power of display....
, following the spirit from Fortuny and the palazzo as a "Laboratory of Ideas". In 2009, the museum organized a second exhibition entitled In-Finitum.