Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin, aka the Griffins, were an exceptional design team, with radical ideas that spanned continents and cultures. Both architects, they established their joint business in California in the early 20th century before relocating to Australia, making their mark with environmentally aware urban design. Both were united by mutual respect…
All posts by Rosie Lesso
The great Dutch-American Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning made paintings as acts of performance, smearing, slapping and swiping great slabs and wedges of paint onto his thickly impastoed surfaces, before scraping them back and starting again. Indulgent, creamy streaks of off-white like that of PARCHMENT Linen were a defining feature, suggesting the flickering movement of…
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…
American painter Robert Ryman made many of his quiet, introspective paintings on biscuit toned backdrops, coloured with the same warm, comforting neutral of NEW SAFARI Linen. He interrupted these backgrounds with jarringly fresh shades of arctic white, sometimes skidding like an accident across the picture plane, other times neatly ordered into fenced off squares. A…
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…
French painter Albert Gleizes had a particular knack for painting radiant, golden tones alike to CURRY Linen, investing his paintings with a humane and deeply comforting warmth. A leader in the school of French Cubism alongside Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Gleizes pioneered new ways of seeing the world, painting with multiple perspectives and fragmented…
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…
Peter Lanyon’s turbulent paintings capture the sublime rough and tumble of the English coastline, with free, energised brushstrokes and luminous shades of grey alike to QUARTZ Linen. A leading member of the St Ives School in Cornwall, Lanyon blended the style of Abstract Expressionism with the majestic wonder of the Cornish landscape, painting craggy rock…
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…
Andrew Wyeth’s paintings are an ode to the barren, melancholic wonder of the American outback, celebrating its long, parched grass and creaky buildings stained yellow in the sun. The golden glow of APPLE CINNAMON Linen tinged Wyeth’s paintings with the tart sweetness of homemade apple juice, infusing a comforting warmth into his otherwise lonely, abandoned…
Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico and ballet director Sergei Diaghilev only worked together on one Ballets Russes production, but their union would prove momentous and life-changing for both. Their collaboration was significant for Diaghilev because it was the last production he would produce before his death later that same year. It was also important for…
“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…
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