Erte
Erte - (1892-1990)
Erte is recognized as one of the most notable fashion illustrators and costume designers; a master of the Art Deco style. He was born Romain de Tirtoff in St. Petersburg, Russia on November 23, 1892. He came from an aristocratic musical family loyal to
the Tsar. Since a very early age, he was introduced to the theater, where his family had a permanent box in the Maryinsky Theater, and also the Ballets Russes of the famed Diaghilev. In 1912, his family moved to Paris, France; he became a French citizen and went to study at the Academie Julian, and at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
In 1913, Erte was hired by Paul Poiret; it is here where he decides to change his name to Erte. During this time he also worked for the Gazette du Bon Ton. In 1914 he designed costumes for a scene called "La Musée Cubiste" in a Paris music hall revue, Plus Ça Change. In 1914 the Prince Nicholas Ourousoff, a distant cousin, came to live with Erté and became his business manager until his death.
Erte then worked for Harper's Bazaar in New York; where his work was published from 1916 to December 1936. By then Erté had gained international reputation as the world's leading fashion illustrator. Erte’s style though influenced by the painting of the Pre-Raphaelites, and by floral and Art Deco patterns, had an original touch; perhaps the result of pictures he saw in the library of his father which included Sixteenth century Persian and Indian miniatures, from which he acquired certain precious decorative motifs, as well as a love for details and for gold and silver.
Erte's ambition from his early beninnings was to design for the stage. Through Poiret, Erté designed costumes for the Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari, and also designed costumes and set the stage for a revue calledL'Orient Merveilleux (1917); where Erté had full range of his imagination for oriental pantomime. During the 1920s and 1930s, he worked in both Paris and New York on the sets for the Folies Bergeres (he designed several costumes for Josephine Baker) and the Ziegfeld Follies. Hollywood also wanted him, and he created sets and costumes for The Mystic and La Boheme. He was very famous for his Alphabet, in which he used the shape of a woman to form each letter. From 1925-1926 Erté collaborated with the French magazine Art et Industrie. He designed utility household objects, lamps, furniture, and domestic interiors. Erté published an article about changing women's fashions in the famous 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (1929), among other projects.
During the late 1930s, World War II, and the 1940s, Erté was primarily involved in the theater in Paris, London, and elsewhere. His designs were acquired by opera, ballet, drama, and music hall companies, from the Saville Theater in London ("It's in the Bag!, 1937) to the surrealistic designs for Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias in Paris (at the Opéra-Comique in 1947). In 1965, at the age of seventy-three, he unveiled thousands of perfectly preserved illustrations; they caused a resurgence ofArt Deco in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. On April 21, 1990, at the age of ninety-seven, Erté died in France.
