Rene Gruau immortalized

Successful Italian poster child changed world of illustrationby Jennifer Febbraro

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.
At the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, a range of his work is made available from posters to ad campaigns, and the evolution of a graphic inventor is traceable along the walls of the gallery. Gruau has become the veritable 'poster child' for success in the world of illustration. And he has proven, once and for all, that fine art has no set boundaries, that art and commerce have an intersection and that it need not be an ugly collision, but actually ripe with newer possibilities, funded by larger budgets, but also disruptive of the snootier notions of "real art".
Gruau has also been honoured in some of the most prestigious galleries in the world - a show of his works had the inaugural show in 1999 at the Museum of Publicity in the Louvre and the Rimini museum hosts a permanent section of his works, as well as museums in Japan, Monaco, and Cologne. This exhibition is unique because it proves that the graphic can also be "fine", in the sense of being considered "fine art". We can also see the modernist influences of a man born in 1909, how his style has returned and resurfaced almost a full millennium later, and how crucial the artist still remains to fashion today.

Rene Gruau shows at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 496 Huron St., until December 12. For more information call 416.921.3802.

Publication Date: 2003-10-19
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