René Gruau was the 20th century’s greatest fashion illustrator. More than that, he was one of its defining poster artists and image-makers. From the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s (his golden period) Gruau’s draughtsmanship, graphisme and effortless élan set the standard by which everyone who came after him would be judged.
His bravura style, with it’s flat planes of colour, daring use of blank space and signature sweeping black line that defined but (copyists note) never deadened character, was arrived at slowly, but when it came into bloom after WW2 it offered a perfect reflection of the upbeat mood of the times. Central to his work, the ‘Gruau Woman’, beautiful and autonomous, swings through the picture plane, or poses by a half open door hinting at pleasures beyond; while men, reduced to ciphers and silhouettes, hover on the margins, ever ready with a bouquet, a bonbon or a handy umbrella.
Eric, Bouché and Willaumëz described fashion. Gruau, in a very real sense, created it.
He was born Zavagali Ricciardelli delle Caminate in Rimini, in 1909, the son of an Italian count and a French aristocrat. His privileged, Visconti-esque early existence (summers spent in Venice, winters in Monte Carlo) was curtailed by his parents’ divorce, and in 1923 he moved with his mother to Milan. Keen to help alleviate their unstable financial situation, he abandoned his ambition to become an architect and fell back on a ‘passionate habit’, drawing.
A family friend, Vera Rossi Lodomez, a fashion editor, suggested he try his luck as a fashion illustrator and, at 15, his first drawings were published in the magazine Lidel. At 18 he was making a modest living and for the next few years Gruau (he adopted his mother’s maiden name in the mid-20s) continued to work in Milan, producing covers for Lidel in the linear, idiomatic style of the day, and drawings for the magazines Fortuna, Dea and Donna.
By 1930 Gruau had moved to Paris, and consolidated his success with commissions from Femina, Vogue and L’Officiel. Talented and extremely prolific he was not yet distinctive enough to rank as a ‘star’ illustrator alongside Eric, Bérard or Lepape. After a brief stint as a designer in London in the late 30s, he returned to France at the outbreak of war. With most of the Paris fashion houses and magazines closed down, he moved to the South of France, where he produced illustrations for Marie-Claire, which had relocated to Lyons
Christian Dior’s debut collection on February 12, 1947, known ever after as The New Look, was a coup de foudre. A valentine to the dreamscape of La Belle Époque, it signalled a return to optimism and opulence. Dior’s hourglass silhouette, with its yards of fabric (made for the flick of a brush) inspired Bérard, Eric and Lila da Nobili to produce some of their most memorable images, but when, later that year, it came to the advertising for his first fragrance, it was Gruau that Dior turned to. The two had been friends since the 1930s (when Dior was an illustrator) and they now began professional partnership that showed how closely their ideals of beauty and femininity, of luxe calme and volupté were in sync. Like Dior, Gruau looked to the past; to Boldini and Drian, to Lautrec and Cheret and, like Dior, his vision was totally of the moment.
These were gala years. Gruau installed himself in high style in an apartment on the Avenue Foch, and was chauffeured to appointments in a Rolls Royce, monogrammed with his initials. He worked with the designers of the moment, Balmain and Jaques Fath; his models were Capucine and Bettina. In America he drew for Bazaar and Vogue and produced perhaps his most perfectly realised editorial work for Fleur Cowles’ legendary magazine, Flair. Hollywood didn’t interest him; he turned down a contract at MGM and found Elizabeth Taylor ‘too dull’ to draw.
Gruau also established a parallel career as a commercial artist and poster designer. Here, his graphic daring came to the fore. Playing on his eternal fascination with dynamic composition, dramatic perspectives and the judicious use of cropping (name an artist as adept at that particular skill) his arresting imagery for lingerie, perfume, travel and, of course, champagne described a world of sensual refinement and privilege; the world according to Gruau.
From the mid 1950s, he began producing posters for the Lido and the Moulin Rouge, giving free reign to Lautrec inspired imagery. Soigné and spirited, his dancers are revealed, or concealed, by riots of feathers and the inky silhouettes of an appreciative male audience. The worldwide reproductions of these images established the artist and emblematic signature way beyond the confines of fashion.
The late 1960s rejection of elegance and style troubled him. Nor was he happy with the rise of mass-culture, describing it as “the domain of ennui, of mediocrity and negligence.” He carried on working, but now his images had an added piquancy of nostalgia for a world that had already all but vanished.
The return to high-octane glamour in 1980s saw Gruau defiantly back in fashion and back on the covers of Vogue, L’Officiel and Madame Figaro. If, occasionally, the Gruau Woman – toying with a rose or winking conspiratorially beneath the brim of a picture hat – had an air of self-parody, it hardly mattered. A major retrospective mounted by his friend, the gallerist Joelle Chariau, at the Musée Galleria in Paris in 1989 was a sensation, establishing a market for the artist’s work that culminated in a record a sale price of $78000 at Christies in 2007.
René Gruau died in Rome in 2004 at the age of 95, elegant, modest and discreet, the embodiment of the world he had described for almost eight decades.
A fantastic, fascinating tribute by Gruau’s heir. Thank you!
(Still, I’ll never be able to pronounce his name correctly.)
Incredible storytelling, thank you 🌸