Irenebrination readers are familiar with the work of Italian illustrator, caricaturist, costume and set designer Umberto Brunelleschi.
Born in Montemurlo, Italy, in 1879, Brunelleschi studied in Florence at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, but then moved to Paris at the beginning of the 1900s. A refined artist and collaborator of famous fashion journals such as the Journal des Dames et Des Modes, La Vie Parisienne, Gazette du Bon Ton and Les Feuillets d'Art, and the founder and artistic director of La Guirlande d'art et de la litterature, Brunelleschi often penned his works, characterised by an oriental style and inspired by Léon Bakst and Erté, under the pseudonyms Aroun-al-Raxid or Aron-al-Rascid.
The artist also designed costumes for the Folies Bergère and the Casino de Paris, for many theatres in New York, Germany and Italy (where he is famous for his work at La Scala in Milan), and for famous stars such as Joséphine Baker.
Throughout the years we looked at his refined illustrations, costumes for the opera and connections with contemporary fashion collections and designers.
Brunelleschi died in 1949 and today marks a significant day as his work is now in the public domain (with the exception of Belarus and Spain, a work enters the public domain in Europe 70 years after the creator's death), so we can now rediscover him and hopefully republish works he illustrated - among them Voltaire's Candide, Charles Perrault's Contes du temps jadis, Musset's La Nuit vénitienne, Diderot's Les Bijoux indiscrets, and Les Aventures du roi Pausole (just to mention a few of them). So, who knows, this may be a Brunelleschi year. And talking about the year that has just started...Happy 2020! Happy New Decade!
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