René Gruau (1909 - 2004) — Architecture With The Eye

Architecture with the eye
Oil on panel, signed lower right.
53 x 70 cm

Provenance: René Gruau Estate

René Gruau, elegance in the stroke of a pen

René Gruau was born in Rimini in 1909. He wanted to be an architect, but at an early agehad to earn his own living. Through a mother's acquaintance, he published his first fashion drawings at the age of 15 in the Milanese magazine Lidel. It was as a true autodidact that he approached fashion design, to which he devoted himself for several years.
He moved to Paris in 1928 and began working for magazines such as Le Figaro and the hat magazine Marianne. It was at this time that he met another young fashion designer, none other than Christian Dior, with whom he struck up a close friendship. Collaborations with women's magazines multiplied: Gruau illustrated Vogue, Fémina, Marie-Claire, Silhouettes, L'Officiel de la couture... He illustrated sumptuous models for Balenciaga, Fath, Piguet, Givenchy, Molyneux, Rochas...
During the Second World War, Gruau, who was not mobilized, ended up in Cannes, where some of the haute-couture houses continued their production as best they could. Marie-Claire commissioned a few more illustrations from him. Back in Paris at the end of the war, René Gruau reunited with Dior, who was about to launch his own couture house, and with his friend the couturier Jacques Fath, who gave numerous balls at his château de Corbeville. In 1948, Gruau tried his hand at the American experience: he went to work for Harper's Bazaar, and at the same time agreed to be the exclusive illustrator for the new magazine Flair, which had just been created by Fleur Cowles. However, he decided to return to France, as he had little taste for working methods on the other side of the Atlantic. He was determined to retain his creative autonomy.
1947 marked the beginning of a long collaboration with Dior, which continued long after the founder's death, until the mid-1980s. René Gruau was responsible for advertising the brand's first fragrance, Miss Dior, and ten other perfume creations followed, including Diorama, Diorissimo and Eau Sauvage. Dior gave Gruau carte blanche, allowing him the greatest artistic freedom in his advertising creations, a particularly stimulating exercise in which the artist flourished.This is how Grau came to work in advertising, which became an increasingly important part of his work, as fashion magazines began to give pride of place to photography. He created numerous campaigns for the perfume, fashion and cosmetics industries, constantly reinventing French elegance.
The advertising designs for Rouge Baiser have left a lasting impression, but Gruau has also signed a number of posters for Balmain, Jacques Griffe, Lucien Lelong, Jacques Fath, Elizabeth Arden, Payot, Peggy Sage, Givenchy... for Scandale lingerie, Bemberg, Dormeuil and Ortalion, Noveltex shirts, Pellet shoes... For several seasons, Gruau was commissioned to embody the campaigns of the legendary Parisian cabarets Lido and Moulin Rouge. This allowed him to reach a wider audience than the fashion magazines, and above all, advertising offered him a less restrictive environment, where he was not obliged to faithfully reproduce a designer's model. Parallel to this intense advertising activity, René Gruau continued to design for fashion magazines such as International Textiles and Sir. 
Gruau's work is of infinite richness, his sovereign line accompanying the representation of women for almost sixty years. A witness to his time, Gruau also left a visual mark on several generations through his timeless work. Towards the end of his life, he developed a personal pictorial production that moved away from the feminine domain he had spent his career magnifying.


Discover more works by this artist on the gallery's website: https://www.galeriepentcheff.fr/fr/peintre-rene-gruau#Oeuvres