Maestro Balenciaga
The Victoria & Albert museum launches a great display that reviews the work of the great Spanish couturier in the first Cristóbal Balenciaga exhibition in the United Kingdom.
Cristóbal Balenciaga at work, 1968, Paris, France.
Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson.
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos
Known and recognised by many as a “maestro” and “architect of haute couture”, his accuracy, control of the technique and perfectionism have granted Cristóbal Balenciaga the recognition of his contemporaries, such as Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy and Coco Chanel.
To the significant number of exhibitions that different museums, including his own, have dedicated to the creator’s work for decades, we can add Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion, a sample that Victoria & Albert has recently inaugurated coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the first boutique that the designer opened in the city of San Sebastian and the 80th anniversary of his arrival to Paris.
A couturier must be an architect for the plans, a sculptor for the shapes, a painter for the colour, a musician for the harmony and philosopher in the sense of proportion
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CRISTOBAL BALENCIAGA
The exhibition is divided into three sections: the salon, the workshop and the Balenciaga legacy; and shows approximately 100 original pieces and about 20 hats, the majority of which pertain to the museum’s collection and had never before been shown in public.
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Sources from the museum have declared that, for the first time, they have used X-ray technology in order to study the construction of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s garments. All of the radiographs that reveal the internal structures of each piece will also be exhibited, revealing the architectural and artistic concept of the creator.
Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion,
in the Victoria & Albert Museum, from May 27th 2017 until February 18th 2018.
COVER PHOTO
Alberta Tiburzi in ‘envelope’ dress by Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Photograph by Hiro Wakabayashi for Harper’s Bazaar, June 1967. © Hiro 1967
