Jan 22, 2015 - Sale 2372

Sale 2372 - Lot 102

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
GILBERT ADRIAN.
Fantasy Wedding. Graphite and pastel on blue wove paper. 445x597 mm; 17 1/2x23 1/2 inches, image. Signed in red pastel, lower right corner. Matted and framed. Circa 1950.
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Additional Details

a fantastical, science-fiction inspired scene by the great hollywood costume designer known as "Adrian," showing a hippopotamus bride in wedding dress, her train being carried by three tall beaked creatures with fishbowl hats. Created for Adrian's "Well-Groomed Africa" series of works exhibited in Manhattan in 1951. Ex-collection Carter Burden.

Discovered by Irving Berlin in 1921, Adrian soon became a Hollywood wunderkind. He worked for Cecil B. DeMille before moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios where he became the most influential dress designer of the era, responsible for creating the Wizard of Oz costumes including Dorothy's ruby slippers, as well as dressing MGM's great stars like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn. Broad-shouldered women's suits and the puffy-sleeve dress became his claim to fame and set the look and style that dominated American fashion during the 1930s and `40s. In the 1950s, his interest and travels in South America and Africa influenced his landscapes and fantastical fashion drawings.