The Sensual Line of Beauty: “Antonio Lopez: Drawings and Photographs” @ Fondazione Sozzani, Milan

Photography dominates our lives: we often (and at times compulsively…) take pictures of ourselves, of the food we are going to eat or of what catches our eye during our daily commuting journey, add some filters and share them on social networks. Though colourful, fun and in some cases visually powerful, these insta-moments often seem to be alive and vivid only for a few hours, and soon we replace them with our next obsession or object of interest.

The fashion industry lives for that beautiful, ethereal, poetic instant. Yet, in the last few years, new generations of people have taken an interest in a form of art that seems to last a little bit longer – fashion illustration. This has happened also thanks to exhibitions dedicated to iconic illustrators. A good example is the event dedicated to Antonio Lopez currently on at Milan's Fondazione Sozzani.

Curated by Anne Morin, Director of diChroma Photography in Madrid, and in collaboration with The Estate and Archive of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos in New York, the Anna Piaggi Cultural Association and the Ottavio and Rosita Missoni Foundation, "Antonio Lopez: Drawings and Photographs" (until 13th April 2020, so the event could be a fashionably art break for those who will be heading to the womenswear shows) features over two hundred original drawings, Kodak Instamatics, photographic grids, collages, diaries and films. All the materials contribute to document Lopez's creative process, his visionary attitude, and the historical period in which he lived. Born in Puerto Rico in 1943, Lopez moved with his family to New York City as a child. He first started sketching at a very early age, often for his mother, who was a seamstress. Lopez studied at the Traphagen School of Fashion and the High School of Art and Design where he demostrated exceptional talent.

In the early '60s he enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York and he started what turned into a life-long creative collaboration with Juan Ramos (they became creative and romantic partners for a while as well, and the signature "Antonio" often meant that the work was a genuine joint effort, the result of two bright minds).

Offered a job as the in-house illustrator at Women's Wear Daily, Lopez left his studies and focused on his art, collaborating with various fashion magazines including The New York Times, Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar.

Yet the biggest change in his life and career came at the end of the '60s when he moved to Paris with Ramos, and with his entourage. The Parisian period was marked by his friendship with Karl Lagerfeld, and by collaborations with a wide range of companies, fashion houses and magazines, including advertising campaigns for fashion houses and department stores.

In Paris Lopez was also surrounded by the iconic ''Antonio's Girls'' – muses such as Jerry Hall, Jessica Lange, Grace Jones, Paloma Picasso, Tina Chow and Pat Cleveland, one of the first big name models of colour. They inspired him as much as he inspired them back: together they built a multiracial group of creative people who started revolutionising the world of fashion. One of the reasons why Lopez and Ramos moved to the more adventurous and cosmopolitan Paris was indeed the fact that including their work featuring models of colour in American magazines wasn't always easy.

Back in New York in the mid-'70s Lopez and Ramos continued to work as fashion illustrators, until, in 1980, Anna Piaggi invited them to work in Milan on the creative direction of Vanity Magazine (January 1982 – October 1989), an avant-garde publication that merged art, fashion, design, and culture directed by Piaggi, Alberto Nodolini and Luca Stoppini.

Working closely with Piaggi and her team, the duo contributed to every issue between 1981-1984, creating iconic illustrations for Albini, Armani, Capucci, Missoni, Versace and Cinzia Ruggeri.

Sadly, Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos died from complications related to AIDS in 1987 and 1995, respectively. In March 1987, when Lopez died at 44, he had several exhibitions of his drawings and portraits in California and in Germany as well.

The exhibition at Fondazione Sozzani is a compact one, but there is still a lot to see and admire: Capucci's flower women blossom in Lopez's illustrations; a minimalist sketch for a Vanity cover with a model with her back to the readers writing the title of the magazine above her head, is simply perfect, while polaroids of Pat Cleveland and Grace Jones bathing capture them in a playfully sensual moment.

Quite often the images are suspended between reality and fantasy with their swooshing lines creating dynamic movements, evoking here and there the art of Cubist painters and showing a willingness to push fashion illustrations into new directions.

Lopez and Ramos' work represented a meeting of cultures: they combined their own backgrounds with New York's freedom, Milan's elegance and Parisian extravagance, coming up with unique and at times exotic representations (check out the illustration for Walter Albini) and visitors who know their fashion history will easily spot connections between these illustrations and photographs and collections by Marc Jacobs, Hannah MacGibbon at Chloé, Anna Sui and MSGM (remember how Lopez's 1974-1975 Red Coat Series of pictures showing Grace Jones, Paloma Picasso, Jessica Lange and Tina Chow wrapped in a red quilt-like padded jackets inspired MSGM's A/W 2016 collection?).

There's more to see in between watercolours for Missoni, drawings of male bodies created for Versace, portraits of Maria Callas, Josephine Baker and Carmen Miranda.

During the exhibition at the Fondazione it is also possible to watch the film "Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion & Disco" directed by James Crump that documents Lopez's world via interviews from Pat Cleveland, Jessica Lange, Grace Jones and Jerry Hall among the others.

The materials on display and Crump's interviewees will prompt visitors to immediately realise that, if Lopez and Ramos hadn't died, they would have genuinely changed the fashion industry. In a way, they are still doing it, thanks to that perfect mix of beauty, sensuality, sexuality, and eroticism delivered in pencil, pen and ink, charcoal, watercolors and Polaroid film.

Image credits for this post

Antonio Lopez, Paris 1974, Photo Booth Series © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos

Antonio Lopez, Vanity (cover study), model unknown, 1982 © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos

Antonio Lopez, "Sportmax – Capes in fluoirescent colours", Vanity, models unknown, 1983 © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos

Antonio Lopez, Pat Cleveland and Grace Jones, Paris 1975, Blue Water Series © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos

Antonio Lopez, "Albini", Vanity Special Edition for Vogue Italia, model unknown, 1981 © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos

Antonio Lopez, "Stripes", Fashions of the Times/ The New York Times Magazine, models unknown, 1966 © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos

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