The practically unknown life of Mariano Fortuny, the Granada genius that nobody claims in his country

It is said that the day after Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo died (Granada, 1871-Venice, 1949), the waters of the Venetian Grand Canal woke up dyed in fabulous colors to the amazement of visitors and locals. The first explanation that would come to mind today would be an artistic action, but it was not the case. Apparently someone - Henriette, the widow was pointed out - had thrown the pigments used by the recently deceased painter, in an involuntary but lacerating metaphor of the oblivion in which his name would end up buried. And that perhaps continues today: this year it has been 150 years since the birth of this artist, set designer, photographer, designer and inventor, one of the great creative minds of the 20th century. And, saving an exhibition that in December will arrive at the CajaGranada art center along with other complementary events in his hometown,no special interest in claiming their Spanish is detected.

"I've heard the story of the colored Grand Canal many times and it must be true," explains Guillermo de Osma, gallery owner and author of an extensive monograph on Fortuny. "Although I tend to think that what was thrown away were vats of textile dye that had appeared somewhere and were no longer going to be used." His book was published for the first time for the Anglo-Saxon market in 1980, but it was not until 34 years later that it arrived in Spain, first under the title

Mariano Fortuny, Arte, Ciencia y Diseño

(Ollero y Ramos) and later, with some corrections , already like

Fortuny

(Nerea). This fact seems to de Osma to be symptomatic of the scant recognition that we give to our cultural personalities: "This is confirmed by how long it took to publish here a book about a Spaniard and also written by a Spaniard."

It is true that this Spaniard lived most of his life outside of Spain. He was born in Granada because his father, the painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, had chosen the Andalusian city as a temporary residence among the large capitals through which he used to move. In her he found freedom and inspiration. Mariano Sr. was, thanks to his evocative orientalist paintings, an artist of international success, truncated by an untimely death at the age of 36. As for her mother, Cecilia de Madrazo, she was not only the daughter of Federico de Madrazo -a chamber painter to Isabel II and a sought-after portraitist of the Spanish oligarchy in the second half of the 19th century- but also a great-granddaughter, granddaughter, niece and sister of painters: a woman of unusual refinement, she was in turn portrayed among others by the Italian Giovanni Boldini,a hotly contested honor among the ladies of European high society.

'The cars of Trespi', a mobile structure used in the Italian popular theater for street performances. Fortuny's contribution is the design of a folding and easily transportable dome. Photographic archive fortuny museum

The boy grew up in a cosmopolitan environment, first between Granada and Rome and later in Paris. After being widowed, Cecilia moved there with little Mariano and his older sister María Luisa. At the height of the

Belle Époque

, she organized receptions and concerts at her home on the Champs-Élysées, while encouraging her son to follow the family path. So from a very young age he trained as a painter and printmaker, while his personal taste leaned more towards the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque than the avant-garde that began to appear from the neighborhoods of Montmartre and Montparnasse.

But the family's way of life was too expensive, and when he was 18, they moved to Venice.

There they settled in the Palazzo Martinengo, next to Santa Maria della Salute.

This city would be the definitive setting for Mariano until the end of his days: he died in what was his residence for half a century, the

Gothic palace Pesaro degli Orfei that today houses the Fortuny Museum.

From Venice, and especially from its historical artists, he drew constant inspiration.

But it was the work of the composer Richard Wagner that, after a youthful visit to his theater in Bayreuth, opened up new avenues for him.

The Wagnerian ideal of artistic purity, and of the total work that brings together all the arts and disciplines, became for him a kind of vital creed.

Mariano Fortuny's private library in the Gothic palace Pesaro degli Orfei, Venice.claudio franzini

Mariano Fortuny's textile workshop in his residence, the Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei.

fortuny museum archive

Although he maintained a close relationship and admiration with other painters, from Alma-Tadema to Zuloaga or Sert, he was an individualist.

With an imposing physical presence (at 1.83 meters, he was unusually tall for the time) and endowed with a strong and somewhat elitist personality, he did not lose the dream of being part of schools or comparing himself with his peers.

Which did not prevent him from being very attentive to what was happening around him: the

Arts & Crafts

movement

, pre-Raphaeliteism,

art nouveau

, the invention of electric light or the renewed fascination for classical cultures were part of his background and paid the terrain of your creative space.

For the rest, certain very specific spatio-temporal coordinates appealed to him, in particular ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. From them he set out to look forward, or rather to an indefinite point where all times, present, past and future converge. For this reason, if his work as a painter is too alien to historiographic discourses to have lasted, his facet as an inventor makes him a character larger than life itself. "He faced different problems, from how to pleat a suit to how to light a stage, and he solved them by inventing," says María del Mar Villafranca, vice president of the Fortuny M Culture association and coordinator of the program that is being prepared in Granada, whose nucleus is the exhibition that he hopes to later take to the Madrid Costume Museum.

Of all these inventions, perhaps the most popular is the Delphos dress. This garment, inspired by the chiton, the tunic worn by men and women in ancient Greece, adhered to the female body and enhanced it, dispensing with corsets and other structures that were almost always mandatory in current fashion. For its manufacture, a special silk pleating system was used, a secret preserved as if it were the third mystery of Fatima. In reality, his authorship is somewhat diffuse, and today there is a tendency to think that his wife and collaborator, the dressmaker Henriette Negrin, corresponds rather. Although the patent was registered in 1907 only in his name, in confidence he used to attribute it to her. And, now a widow, Negrin herself would influence it in a handwritten letter to her friend Elsie McNeill, also her successor at the head of the brand,in which, incidentally, he gave instructions to terminate the production of the Delphos.

Delphos dress, inspired by the chiton, the tunic worn by men and women in ancient Greece, and the Knossos shawl, a veil printed with Minoan art motifs that was used as a toga. The ideal was to combine these two garments photographic archive fortuny museum

Before that, it had been worn in

petit committee by

clients with a particularly audacious spirit (in a world still ruled by 19th century ways, putting it on was dangerously close to going around naked) such as Isadora Duncan, Eleonora Duse or the Marchioness Casati, in addition to the character by Albertine from

In Search of Lost Time

, the great literary work of Marcel Proust. Nor should we forget its predecessor, the Knossos shawl, a veil printed with Minoan art motifs that cleverly arranged was used as a toga. The ideal was to combine a Knossos with a Delphos: it couldn't be more modern than that at the turn of the century.

Inspired by the rich brocades and velvets he had known from his parents' collection, Fortuny also discovered procedures for dyeing and printing fabrics. Thanks to them, cotton acquired the consistency and exuberance of those initially more luxurious cloths, with patterns that superimposed the metallic tones of gold and silver on the colors of Venetian painting. Its manufacturing method also remains a secret: in fact, the Fortuny factory in the

Venetian

Giudecca

(inaugurated in 1922) is forbidden to anyone who does not intervene directly in the production process. These fabrics are today the only of his creations that are made there.

María del Mar Villafranca points out that, as a child, the artist discovered the prodigy of electric light at a Universal Exposition in Paris and his future research in this area contributed hitherto unpublished environmental effects.

In 1901 he patented his lighting system, with a large dome that served as both a background and a reflective screen, which he continued to refine as it spread around the world.

Dissemination that was even excessive: the Spanish creator could not prevent the ingenuity from being plagiarized and applied in hundreds of settings without his consent.

Collection of fabrics from fortuny in the gothic palace Pesaro degli Orfei.Fortuny museum archive

From this same system, but transferred to the domestic environment, in 1907 he devised a hemispherical floor lamp whose interior reflected the light of the central bulb. Formally as revolutionary as the Delphos dress, it made him seem at the same time timeless and ultra-modern, and it is still difficult to explain that it is a pre-World War I design (not to mention the Bauhaus). Later he would conceive other beautiful lamps with domed shapes, in glass or textile material, of a very elegant historicism although somewhat more conventional. Furniture, storage systems for artistic materials, photographic development methods ...

One of his most ambitious projects was the construction of a large open-air theater on the Parisian Esplanade des Invalides, for which he and a good friend, the decadentist writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, enlisted some wealthy investors. The so-called

Théâtre des Fêtes

, his definitive total work in the Wagnerian way, never came to fruition but, as Guillermo de Osma explains in his book, it would have been ahead of American drive-ins or mammoth theaters like the Grand Rex in Paris. In return, in 1920 he installed his scenic dome in one of the most important coliseums in the world, the Scala in Milan. And in 1937 his services were requested to light the restored

tintorettos

exhibited in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco and the

carpaccios

of the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni.

Although its most creative period corresponds to the first decade of the last century, the great returns came somewhat later.

Once the furious novelty had been overcome, the more fluid fashions of the twenties and thirties brought him a new validity among the wealthy classes: having at least one Fortuny in the wardrobe was a sign that one knew what to do.

Even Hollywood stars like Dolores del Río or Lillian Gish were seduced by the Delphos.

Meanwhile, from the

Giudecca

His fabulous cotton fabrics were coming out at a good pace, destined to bring a classic touch to the interiors of mansions, palaces and luxury hotels, as well as a selection of small elements of furniture, among them his famous lamps. Their dresses and sets were also frequently required in expensive theater, opera and dance productions. In the Spanish pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1924 he presented several paintings (he used to design all the interior design of the national pavilions until 1940), and a year later he was present with his textiles at the

Exposition des Arts Décoratifs

in Paris, which he noted the worldwide advent of the new

art deco style

.

Palazzo Fortuny Museum (Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei), in Venice, home of Spanish artist and designer Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo.Riccardo Bianchini / Alamy Stock Photo

In 1927, the American decorator Elsie McNeill convinced him to become her exclusive distributor for the United States, where they achieved resounding success.

Henriette Negrin decided upon Fortuny's death that it was McNeill who should continue to lead the legacy.

"Elsie had already saved the brand during the world war and the first postwar years," explains Guillermo de Osma.

“And then he bought the business to continue with it, which I find admirable.

It was like an American dogaresa who focused all her activity on making the business prosper.

And he got it".

Converted into a Venetian by adoption, the

Contessa

Gozzi (by her marriage to Count Alvise Gozzi, her second husband) remained at the helm until his death in 1994. Then the company passed to his lawyer and henchman, the North American of Egyptian Coptic origin Maged Riad.

Today it is his sons, Mickey and Maury Riad, who manage the firm.

The two brothers make up a well-oiled mechanism in which Maury Riad directs the business side and Mickey the creative one.

In front of the

Giudecca

factory

that produces their patterned fabrics, where no one but them and a scant dozen employees can enter, we asked them about their future plans. And they propose one very close to the earth and another more utopian. The first is to use the artist's 150th anniversary to vindicate his legacy and history. Especially in Spain, where the word Fortuny is usually thought of as a certain disco that experienced its heyday in the nineties, and with which there is actually a connection: its name comes from the Madrid street where it is located, named after Mariano Fortuny father. The second plan is the conquest of the cosmos, a possibility that would undoubtedly have pleased Mariano himself: “We will be the first to decorate a house in space,” Maury jokes. "Who better than Fortuny for an interior design on Mars!"