Influence on both pathways
But if until then it is Chanel who is inspired by the Spanish artistFrom the second part of the exhibition, centered on Olga Khokhlova, Picasso’s first wife, “the sense of influence changes”, said Guillermo Solana.
In the pictures that Picasso paints of his muse Olga, who was a regular client of the French designer and frequently wore her clothes, “she is facing the problem of Chanel’s straight lines (…) She is working to recreate what Chanel has created and the dialogue between creator and creator is being considered”, added Solana.
In this section you can see, for example, a Chanel day dress from 1922, gray with white fur on the collar and cuffs, very similar to the one worn by the character in the painting “Harlequin with a mirror” from 1923.
The last two parts of the exhibition focus on occasions when Chanel and Picasso, who met in 1917 and had many mutual friends, collaborated directly.
The first one was at work. Antigonepremiered at the L’Atelier theater in Montmarte in December 1922, in which Picasso was in charge of the set and Chanel of the costumes.
And the second, for the ballet “The Blue Train”, with a libretto by the French playwright and novelist Jean Cocteau, which, presented in 1924, featured Chanel costumes and a curtain decorated with the work “Two Women Running on the Beach” of Picasso.
These latest collaborations show “this dialogue between fashion and painting, (…) theatre, dance and the arts that is at the heart of the inventive experimental cultural scenes of the interwar period and that constitute the very object of this exhibition”, estimated Cécile Debray, president of the Picasso Museum in Paris, which donated several pieces for the Thyssen exhibition.