#groningermuseum #gianniversace #retrospective
Groninger Museum will celebrate Gianni Versace’s colourful and daring fashion with a major retrospective of his creations.
The flamboyant designer was murdered 25 years ago outside his home in Miami but his revolutionary creative spirit lives on in the fashion of today.
Running from 2 December 2022 through 7 May 2023, Gianni Versace Retrospective will showcase men’s and women’s outfits, accessories, drawings, and footage of legendary shows harking back to the Italian designer’s glory days between 1989 and 1997.
Gianni Versace (1946–1997) was a pioneer. He challenged traditional images of masculinity and femininity, designing clothing for both sexes and referencing sexuality and power in his collections. As an openly gay man, he became a key figure in the LGBTQ movement. He also encouraged women to be self-confident enough not to hide their bodies.
The colourful, daring, emotional exhibition takes visitors inside the eccentric Italian fashion designer’s world of extravagant clothing and lavish catwalk shows in which clothing, pop music and design come spectacularly together. Gianni Versace was murdered 25 years ago, but his revolutionary spirit lives on in the fashion of today. From 2 December 2022 through 7 May 2023, the Groninger Museum honours Versace and his trailblazing designs.
Gianni Versace Retrospective showcases men’s and women’s #outfits, #accessories, #fabrics, #drawings, #interiordesigns, and #footage of #legendary #shows harking back to the #Italian designer’s glory days between 1989 and 1997, all testifying to his extraordinary #creativity. Versace linked fashion with music, photography and graphic design and led the way in the transformation of fashion shows and #advertising #campaigns into works of art. He succeeded in bringing the arts together as no one had before. All the items in the exhibition are original pieces, sourced from international private collections.
As a clever marketer, Versace recruited #celebrities to promote his brand. At the same time, he turned previously unknown models such as Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford into supermodels.
Versace’s groundbreaking combinations and strong patterns sprang from his vast knowledge of visual culture and art history. He brought together classical and pop art imagery and found inspiration in figures from ancient Greece as well as subjects like bondage and SM. Versace worked with artists like Andy Warhol, Jim Dine and Julian Schnabel, raising the profile of the marriage between old and new like never before.
He worked on his advertising campaigns with forward-looking photographers like Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh and Bruce Weber. Versace created a new status quo in the fashion industry. Gianni Versace was murdered at age 50 in front of his house in Florida. He had left a unique mark on the fashion world and won multitudes of fans, and numerous pop stars and other prominent #people, including Princess Diana and Elton John, attended his funeral. With his death, the fashion world lost one of its most important designers of the 20th century.The exhibition was curated by Versace experts Karl von der Ahé and Saskia Lubnow.
images Groninger Museum/Gianni Versace S.p.A