CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/4/2019

Gorgeous 'Balenciaga and Spanish Painting' is a Staff Pick Holiday Gift, 2019!

Featured images—Ignacio Zuloaga's Portrait of María del Rosario de Silva y Gurtubay, Duchess of Alba, 1921, and a Balenciaga evening gown in taffeta, 1952—are reproduced from Balenciaga and Spanish Painting, the deluxe exhibition catalogue from Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza featuring a variety of special papers, exquisite printing, sewn-in black-and-white booklets of vintage documentary photographs and portraits, newly commissioned photography and a wealth of historical paintings that influenced the master couturier. "Feel," Eloy Martínez de la Pera writes. "Feeling Velázquez, Balenciaga created the most beautiful feminine silhouettes of twentieth-century couture. Feeling El Greco, he used iridescent silk satins, sateens and taffetas draped with the most vibrant colors. Feeling Sánchez Coello and Pantoja de la Cruz, he dyed wool and velvets black, elevating the absence of color to the peak of elegance. Feeling Zurbarán, he designed emblematic volumes with gazar in all his creations and eliminated seams in order to purify a wedding dress to the maximum. Feeling Goya, he rendered a handmade lace embellished by transparency. Feeling Zuloaga, he found pride in 'Spanishness' that emerged in each of his layers, in each of his toiles. Feeling art, he honored art itself, seeking the perfection of a stitch, the legacy of a simple seamstress from Getaria: Martina Eizaguirre, his mother."