Fashionable in art déco style
15.09.2024-16.02.2025, Fashionable in the style of art déco exhibition, exhibition venue Gallery of Painting of Alfons Karpinski, 12 Rozwadowska St.
The exhibition Fashionable in Art Déco Style will take up the theme of women’s fashion from the 1920s and 1930s in a broad perspective, taking into account the assumptions of the modern direction in art, which was art déco. The exhibition will present primarily objects of artistic craftsmanship: dresses, headgear, footwear, along with a wide range of accessories: handbags, including metal barbed wire mesh bags, clutch bags and cosmetic essentials, pen fans and toilet glassware (perfume bottles, pouches). The relics come mainly from Western European countries, a large part from France and England, but also from the United States of America, Japan, as well as Poland and Czechoslovakia. The exhibits that will be presented at the exhibition are valuable objects of material culture in the field of women’s fashion, illustrating the stylistic transformations, undeniably related to the women’s revolution that took place in the interwar period. At the same time, they are interesting, often luxurious examples of women’s must have, often with surprising forms, such as essentials, the so-called “carry all.
The links between fashion and commerce and advertising are obvious, but they experienced a real boom in the interwar period. An interesting object related to this process was a paper advertising fan in the form of a balloon. We will present several of them in the exhibition, such as fans advertising the Galleria Lafayette, a famous Parisian department store.
The exhibition will be iconographically enriched with paintings showing modern women in their style of being and carrying themselves, such as Portrait of Actress Gryf-Olszewska by Alfons Karpinski. It will be complemented by prints with portraits of fashionable Rzeszow women, made from glass negatives from Edward Janusz’s Rzeszow Photographic Plant (nota bene it was then run by the wife and daughters of the late founder), which enjoyed a period of prosperity in the interwar years. The historical background and the formation of the art déco style will be illustrated by graphic material (postcards, graphics, articles), including from the World Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925, the cover of “Vogue” in 1929, designs from the fashion house Vionnet.
The title of the exhibition “Fashionable in Art Deco Style” refers to both the fashionably dressed woman and the modern, liberated, active woman – that one, but also the one today.
The exhibition is organized from the collections of the Rzeszow District Museum, in large part from the purchased and borrowed collection of Hanna Szudzińska, and thanks to private collectors.
Curator of the exhibition: Beata Kuman (Regional Museum in Rzeszow)
MR coordinator: Wioletta Nawrocka
