All posts by Rosie Lesso

One of the most formidable design pairings of the mid-20th century, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi founded the radical, controversial American architectural studio Venturi Scott Brown and Associates, also known as VSBA. Working in tandem from 1969 to 2012, they pioneered a postmodern approach to design, believing architecture and urban design should reference the…

Italian duo Anna Castelli Fierrieri and Giulio Castelli are the faces behind iconic furniture brand Kartell, which brought cheeky fun to the mid-20th century market with vibrant, shiny plastic furniture. They were a formidable design team, she the designer, he the biochemist, fusing his cutting-edge plastic production with her radical modernist design. Such was the…

British-American painter Cecily Brown weaves Purple Sage Linen’s deep lavender shade into her expressionist canvases, letting it form shadowy rivulets of uneasy, hedonistic darkness. Brown made her name in New York in the late 1990s, painting tangled bodies lavishing in paradisiacal gardens with fleshy passages of paint in rich, indulgent jewel tones. Process, she explains…

Spanish painter Juan Gris in best known as a pioneer of early 20th century art, spearheading a bright, playful strand of Cubism in France. But for a brief spell, his career took another path, travelling down the route of theatre design for Ballets Russes director Sergei Diaghilev. Under Diaghilev’s guidance Gris produced a series of…

Salvador Dali, the great master of ludicrous, Surrealist nonsense was a huge admirer of dance. Dali began designing sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes in the late 1930s, around 10 years after the death of its original founder, Sergei Diaghilev, so sadly the pair never officially worked together. But Diaghilev’s formidable shadow still loomed…

Andre Derain was the the great Fauvist painter who liberated colour, setting it free across his canvases with great swipes, streaks and slashes of unmixed paint. But there is another, less well-known side to Derain; from the 1920s to the 1950s he also turned his talents to the ballet, envisioning impossibly sumptuous sets and costumes…

Russian radical Mikhail Larionov is perhaps best-known as the rebellious young artist who galvanised 20th century abstraction in Russia. But in his later years, he went through a dramatic transformation, reinventing himself as a set and costume designer for the European stage. It was Larionov’s close friendship with Ballets Russes director Sergei Diaghilev that made…

“The more one digs, the more one finds the solidest [foundation] for you and I to build a life together.” Eero Saarinen Aline and Eero Saarinen are considered titans of the architectural world, each having made vital, long-lasting contributions to the landscape of American modernism. She was the esteemed writer and broadcaster who made architecture…