Mariuccia Mandelli Portrait (Krizia)

Andy Warhol’s diptych of Mariuccia Mandelli is a ravishing entry into his great line of portraiture, and is the only work he made of the seminal fashion designer. Against a blood-red background in one silkscreened canvas and a lighter orange tone in its pendent, Mandelli gazes wisely and wistfully out of the picture plane, her light blue eyes wetted with a trace of nostalgia. The light that is reflected from her shiny, dark bob haircut is tinged with the background colours, whilst her lips are pursed in a seductively powerful red. This work an especially enticing example of Warhol’s silkscreened headshots, paintings executed for friends working in fashion, film, music, and the visual arts. Like other contemporary works, Mariuccia Mandelli Portrait (Krizia) displays Warhol’s love for high-glamour, but it also immortalises the sitter in his signature flat style, inspired by commercial graphic design.

Mariuccia started her fashion label, Krizia, in 1954, dashing around Milan with a suitcase full of samples. Later, Mandelli became one of the first female designers to work on men’s clothing and championed tailoring in womenswear, whilst developing one of the first prototypes for hot pants. Never to shy away from widespread demands, Mandelli understood her market; Umberto Eco notably professed that ‘she invents the taste of her public’. She was known to have a wild public demeanour, and was a prolific personality on the 1960s Milanese social scene. Her personal image became almost as distinctive as her innovative designs, with this look captured sparklingly by Warhol in the current work. In the wake of her death two years ago, Mariuccia Mandelli Portrait (Krizia) retrospectively commemorates a true icon of fashion in pictorial format, celebrating a woman of exceptional talent, character and beauty.