About the Exhibition
The Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895–1972) is often called “the couturier’s couturier”—the fashion designer most admired by other fashion designers, among them Christian Dior and Coco Chanel. “Haute couture is like an orchestra whose conductor is Balenciaga. We other couturiers are the musicians, and we follow the direction he gives,” praised Dior. Chanel once remarked, “Balenciaga alone is a couturier in the truest sense of the word. Only he is capable of cutting a material, assembling it and hand-sewing it. The rest are just designers.”
From his first runway collection in 1937 through the closure of his Paris salon in 1968, Balenciaga had as his clients some of the most influential trendsetters of the day. Balenciaga in Black features more than 100 pieces from the collections of the Palais Galliera, the distinguished fashion museum of the city of Paris, and the Balenciaga Archives, as well as select examples from the Texas Fashion Collection at the University of North Texas in Denton.
“Cristóbal Balenciaga is among the most influential fashion designers of modern times. His eye for creating garments that were sophisticated and restrained yet intricate and detailed, paired with his mastery of materials and construction, was unrivaled,” commented Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “He was truly an architect of couture, and I’m thrilled that his creations will be presented in the striking architecture of the Kimbell’s Piano Pavilion. With their modern materials, the Pavilion galleries provide an elegant background for the designer’s strong black silhouettes and volumes while highlighting the luxurious fabrics and exquisite details. The result is an engaging and appealing contrast between contemporary architecture and high fashion.”
The carefully selected costumes and accessories in Balenciaga in Black, all made by hand in the haute-couture ateliers of this fashion genius, share one major feature: they are all black. Black, celebrating the artist’s ascetic, almost monastic taste, and because Balenciaga’s sources of inspiration, the spiritual underpinnings of his work, were the folklore and traditions of his native Spain. This exhibition reassesses the great couturier’s work, underscoring Balenciaga’s artistry in manipulating black fabrics, embroideries, and lace—magically transforming these materials into exquisite garments.
For Balenciaga, black was more than a color or even a noncolor; it was a vibrant matter, by turns opaque or transparent, matte or shiny—a dazzling interplay of light, showcased as much through the luxurious quality of the fabrics as through the simplicity of a garment’s cut. From the never-before-seen black prototypes to the most abstract forms from his later collections, Balenciaga’s use of infinite shades of black emphasizes the essential shapes, dense volumes and astonishing silhouettes of his unique creations. His timeless and expertly executed clothes, with impeccably composed adornments of lace, embroidery, silk, satin, fringes, beads and sequins, continue to inspire modern fashion.
Balenciaga’s work is not only sculptural but also pictorial, paralleling the Kimbell’s presentation of the great Spanish masters of black paint—Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo and Goya—whom the couturier esteemed. Visitors will enjoy exploring these connections in the complementary exhibition Goya in Black and White. Balenciaga and Goya, separated by more than a century, were not contemporaries, yet their shared references to Spanish heritage and history, expressed through vivid contrasts of light and dark, are unmistakable.
