Does an artist always have a source of inspiration in developing a creative idea? How is it elaborated, which is the way it profiles, which are the results it leads to? These are the questions we faced as base of this exhibition.
There were two times in Salvatore Ferragamo’s life when the ideal conditions were in place for the processing of the inspiration and vision that would influence the future artist: his arrival in California in the mid 1910’s where he became famous as 'Shoemaker of Dreams' and where he found a forge of experimentations powered by the 1922 discovery of the Pharaoh Tutankhamon’s tomb in Egypt, which offered immense creative potential for film, used by Ferragamo to realize sandals that Cecil B. De Mille, the great director of silent films who was fascinated by the Orient, commissioned from him for the leading roles in The Ten Commandments.
Other fundamental moment was Salvatore Ferragamo's return to Italy in 1927, when he decided to settle in Florence, the city that, at that time, was at the heart of the country’s artistic and cultural life. In Florence Ferragamo would be awed by many public and private collections providing an extraordinary documentation of examples of applied arts, for example Frederick Stibbert Collection as well as Archaeological, Ethnographic and Natural History Collections.
Together with this stimulus, Ferragamo was also fascinated by the experiments in materials and colours that avant-garde artists – first and foremost the Futurists, but also Thayaht, Sonia Delaunay, Duchamp and Giò Ponti – were conducting in the same years as Florence was becoming an important cultural epicentre.
255 works of art displayed, including 99 Salvatore Ferragamo shoes dating back to the 1920’s through the end of 1950, along with 156 works of art from public and private collections, not only international but especially Italians and Florentines.
Dove:
Salvatore Ferragamo museum, piazza Santa Trinità, 5/r, Florence
