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On the occasion of the centenary of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts held in Paris in 1925—considered the official moment of affirmation of Art Déco—the exhibition Fantasie Déco recounts the collecting passion of Giuliano Ercoli (1940–2023), one of Italy’s foremost experts on early twentieth-century graphic art, in the transitional years from Art Nouveau to Art Déco. Ercoli was among those “print enthusiasts” who, beginning in the 1970s, fostered a critical and collector’s rediscovery of works on paper, considering them “essential points of reference, capable of defining an era, a taste, a style” (G. Ercoli).
The collection is in fact a mirror of the art historian’s interests: through his studies and research, he gathered hundreds of works which, according to his wishes, entered the collection of Fondazione CR Firenze in 2023. They are now presented for the first time at the Ivan Bruschi House Museum—part of the Intesa Sanpaolo cultural heritage—in a selection focused on Déco. The extensive collection, comprising over eight hundred works of art by Italian and French artists, includes a spectacular costume design by Erté, paintings, rare and valuable works on paper, precious illustrated books, and several ceramic sculptures. The most represented artist is Umberto Brunelleschi (1879–1949), who trained in Florence but moved to Paris in 1900, where he pursued a brilliant career and became one of the leading exponents of the Déco style.
Organised into thematic sections, the exhibition explores the renewed fascination with the eighteenth century typical of the period, fashion illustration as a new form of art, and the vibrant world of music halls and variety shows.
Fantasie Déco thus celebrates the French artistic context of the 1910s and 1920s through works that reach toward imagination and dreams—escapes into enchanted worlds populated by timeless female figures.
The works in the collection also document the spread of pochoir, a technique that combines the serial nature of colouring with stencils—starting from tempera or gouache—with the craftsmanship of execution. Through the two-dimensional simplification of images and the application of flat, vivid colours, pochoir played a crucial role in shaping and affirming the Déco aesthetic.
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“I remember a dreamlike garden where velvety butterflies were pale wandering masks.”
Gérard d’Houville
One of the defining themes of the Art Déco style is its reinterpretation of the eighteenth century. In painting, this meant above all the rediscovery of artists such as Antoine Watteau and the genre he introduced: the fêtes galantes, scenes of masked figures in parks and gardens, often paired with subjects from the Commedia dell’Arte. Umberto Brunelleschi, in particular, became one of the most admired exponents of this refined, elegant taste—tinged with a certain nostalgic melancholy—that found a privileged point of reference in the eighteenth century.
Among the works in the collection is the rare and precious series Les Masques et les Personnages de la Comédie italienne (1914), which “one would be tempted to call the artist’s masterpiece” and “one of the most intense episodes in the revival of theatrical masks in the twentieth century” (G. Ercoli). Images of light-hearted gaiety or disquieting mystery dominate Brunelleschi’s production throughout the 1920s, reflecting a widespread desire for escapism that often takes as its ideal stage an enchanting eighteenth-century Venice.
During these same years, Brunelleschi—like many of his contemporaries—embraced the vogue for turquerie, which rose to prominence at the end of the first decade of the century thanks to couturier Paul Poiret and the Ballets Russes. This fascination intertwined with other cultural and visual influences. He turned to evocations of distant civilizations—Persia, India, Japan, and China—already familiar through collecting trends, but also Spain, whose folklore lent a spirited sensuality to his seductive female figures. Venetian masks coexist with Indian turbans and Spanish mantillas; everything contributes to the flight into fantasy, a possible antidote to the unstable realities of the time.
This section also presents three works by Mario Laboccetta, inspired by the eighteenth century and offering further evidence of the popularity of this theme in the 1920s and of Ercoli’s attention to outstanding, if uncommon and little-known, artists.
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“It is the hand of the craftsman that alone renders, directly, the work of the artist’s hand.”
Sem (Georges Goursat)
From the early twentieth century through the 1930s, pochoir colouring was a widely used technique—especially in France—across various sectors of graphic production. It was a method for reproducing images in which the artisan’s manual skill played a crucial role, making each plate a multiple yet simultaneously a unique piece, achieving surprising precision and detail. This technique was practiced in specialized ateliers where artists and artisans worked side by side.
The first step was the printed reproduction of the artist’s drawing. The composition was then analysed and stencils prepared—thin sheets of cardboard, zinc, or copper cut out in correspondence with each colour area. Colour was applied with brushes of different shapes and sizes, depending on the desired effects. Once the stencils were carefully removed, avoiding any smudging, small touch-ups completed the work.
Simplified forms, crisp outlines, and flat, vivid colours made pochoir one of the identifying features of Art Déco and one of its principal channels of dissemination.
One of the ateliers that brought the technique to perfection was that of Jean Saudé, who described it in detail in a valuable treatise published in 1925. A copy of this celebrated volume was an essential part of Giuliano Ercoli’s collection; he had devoted much of his research to early twentieth-century graphic art and published a book dedicated to pochoir. Testifying to the close link between scholarship and collecting are the printed proof of an initial working phase (Le concert aux étoiles) and the plates that allow comparison between the artist’s gouache and its pochoir translation (Amour de Colombine and Arlecchino in Cina).
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“Dress is the embodiment of the spirit of its time.”
Gazette du Bon Ton, 1920
In the 1910s, the major transformations in fashion found affirmation and circulation through luxurious publications. Fashion illustration emerged as a new and original art form, focusing more on the expressive power of the image than on the detailed depiction of garments, ultimately taking on the value of a portrait of contemporary life.
The key stages in the evolution of this new genre are documented by works of high historical and artistic significance: the famous album Les robes de Paul Poiret racontées par Paul Iribe (1908), which “changed the history of illustration no less than that of fashion” (G. Ercoli), and Les choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape (1911), which shaped public taste even more than its predecessor, fuelled by the craze for turquerie that exploded around 1910.
The vibrant spirit of the period is further confirmed by the founding in 1912 of three magazines destined to become exemplary, drawing on the collaboration of leading couturiers and top illustrators: Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui, the most refined, producing annual albums entrusted to a single artist in the style of Poiret; the Gazette du Bon Ton, the longest-running and most renowned, an unsurpassed model of formal elegance; and the Journal des Dames et de Mode, the most intellectual and witty, showcasing the finest artistic and cultural creations as well as fashion.
From the mid-1910s onward, fashion and its illustration came increasingly under the influence of Cubism and the avant-gardes. The emerging new image of woman—foreshadowing that of the 1920s—was rendered in geometric forms and colours rooted in Expressionism. A significant example is the 1920 album The Essence of the Mode of the Day by Janine Aghion.
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To offer audiences “something to dream for and something to smile at.”
Paul Derval
In the wake of the First World War, Paris witnessed the explosion of the revue—the music hall—a major form of entertainment combining theatre, music, dance, and satire. Many artists were involved in creating dazzling stage sets and imaginative costumes for these variety shows, which had no plot and whose titles were purely evocative. Paul Derval, director of the Folies Bergère, decreed, for instance, that every title must contain the word folie or folies and consist of exactly thirteen letters.
These shows unfolded in “tableaux”—as many as fifty per performance—whose success relied on lively music, the near-nudity of singers and dancers, some innovative stage and lighting effects, and above all the splendour and inventiveness of sets and costumes.
The Ercoli Collection of Fondazione CR Firenze includes nearly one hundred set and costume design sketches, mostly by artists working in Paris, such as the Italian Umberto Brunelleschi, who in the 1920s was among the most prominent contributors to the lavish, glittering productions of the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Folies Bergère.
Some sketches bear precious inscriptions with the name of the character portrayed or with instructions for the costume workshops—such as the renowned atelier of Max Weldy—which had the formidable task of interpreting artists’ sometimes extravagant drawings and producing hundreds or even thousands of costumes for each show.
Today these costume designs, increasingly sought after by collectors and the subject of active research, offer vivid glimpses of an era suspended between splendour and illusion.