Fortuny

Mariano FORTUNY Y MADRAZO (1871-1949)

Spanish dress and fabric designer-artist

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was one of the most creative minds of his time. He mainly worked in Italy and he was renowned for his Art Nouveau textiles that included fine-pleated silk gowns, lustrous silk and velvet scarves.

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was born in 1871 in Granada, Spain and his father, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, was also a painter and an eclectic collector of Ancient oriental tissues and carpets, rare potteries and metal armories.

His father died when he was only three and his mother, also much involved with art, moved the family to Paris where Mariano started painting. In 1889, the family moved to Venice, Italy, and Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo established his atelier-laboratory in a magnificent palace (Palazzo Pesaro Orfei), which eventually became the Palazzo Fortuny, now the Fortuny Museum.   His life was dedicated to Art as he was not only an accomplished dress and fabric designer, but he also excelledin various disciplines such as interior and stage design, painting, photography, architecture, lighting. Fortuny also invented new methods of textile dyeing and of printing processes onto fabrics, reproducing the depth, color and beauty of ancient brocades, velvets and tapestries.  Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo died in his Venetian Palace 1949 and was burried in the Verano Cimetery in Rome.

At the turn of the century, he experimented applying the newly invented electric light to stage design and worked also with the famous Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio.

For internal decoration he created the elegant Fortuny’s lamps, which diffused subtle light through opalescent silk shades, stretched over delicate wire form. The silk was hand-painted with gold motifs inspired by Oriental art and as a finishing touch, the lamps were decorated with glass beads and silk cording.