PARIS — As the Venice Biennale prepares to kick off an edition that will be dominated by female and gender nonconforming artists, the prestigious art event has found a new supporter in Dior.
The French fashion house has become a donor for the 59th International Art Exhibition, scheduled to run from April 23 to Nov. 27. This edition is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian woman to direct the event, and a friend of Pietro Beccari, chairman and chief executive officer of Christian Dior Couture.
“It was a good occasion also to celebrate women artists because Cecilia didn’t unveil the exact percentages, but she said that women artists are the vast majority of this exhibition compared to the past,” Beccari told WWD.
Some of them, like feminist artist Tomaso Binga, have collaborated with Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director of womenswear at Dior, on her fashion show sets. Others, like Carla Accardi, are among the artists Chiuri most admires.
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“There are many people represented in the Biennale who are meaningful to us, and to Maria Grazia in particular, so there are many, many stories to tell around this collaboration,” Beccari said.
Dior’s involvement will be multifaceted. For the second time, the house is partnering with Venetian Heritage, a philanthropic organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of Venice’s cultural treasures, on a fundraising gala.
To be held at the Teatro La Fenice on the opening day of the Biennale on Saturday, the event is designed to fund the restoration of the Ca’ d’Oro Museum on the Grand Canal, considered the best surviving palazzo in Venetian Gothic architecture.
Dior and Venetian Heritage sealed their partnership with a masked ball in 2019. This year’s planned ball has been scaled back to a dinner out of respect for the victims of the war in Ukraine, while organizers have decided to donate a portion of the benefits to Ukrainian refugees in Italy.
The partners are linked by architect Peter Marino, who was named chairman of the nonprofit in 2019 and has designed countless stores for luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, including Dior’s recently restored flagship on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, which is filled with original art works.
“Venice is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the heritage of humankind, and there are so, so many things to restore and to take care of that the Italian state cannot cope. Venetian Heritage is one of the most serious associations that is helping the Italian state and Venice,” Beccari said.
“We’ll keep helping them as much as we can and it’s not going to be the last time that you will see us in Venice in some form. On top of it, we have a fantastic hotel, the Cipriani, which is also an institution and belongs to LVMH, so we have many reasons to be there,” he added.
In addition, Dior has commissioned Fabrizio Plessi, the 82-year-old Venetian artist known for his video installations, to reinterpret its Lady Dior handbag. The house previously sponsored Plessi’s installation in 2020 lighting up windows on St. Mark’s Square in flickering gold tones reminiscent of the mosaics in St. Mark’s Basilica.
For this project, Plessi again drew inspiration from gold, embellishing his bag with mosaics in 24-karat gold leaf crafted by the Orsoni Venezia 1888 furnace, framing a screen that displays the name Dior undulating as if projected on water. The bag will be exhibited in Dior’s boutique in Venice.
“It’s a piece of art that you can carry around. It’s born neither as a bag, neither as a sculpture. It’s a combination born of synergies between art and fashion,” Beccari said.
Dior has nurtured its relationship with artists, namely through the collaborations initiated in parallel by Chiuri and Kim Jones, artistic director of menswear, inspired by founder Christian Dior’s original career as a gallerist who showed the work of avant-garde artists such as Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti.
Meanwhile, the brand’s Dior Lady Art project, consisting of limited-edition handbags designed by leading artists, is set to enter its seventh edition this year. Beccari sees obvious parallels between art and fashion.
“Both of them have something in common which is unusual: they both can influence the taste of people, they can change the way we see things and I believe they are married in a sense,” he said. “It’s difficult to consider them separately. I think they are originated by the same DNA.”
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