Handred in Art in Fashion: MASP Renner - Clothing as a work of art

— March 20, 2024

Learn about the history of MASP's clothing collection that changed the way fashion and art were viewed in Brazil and that we are now part of along with other designers and artists. READ MORE

In the early 1950s, Pietro and Lina Bo Bardi, director and architect of the MASP museum, began a bold project that would change the way fashion and art were viewed in Brazil. The creation of a permanent collection of special clothing items. This project was part of the idea of a “museum outside the limits,” a reconfiguration of the way the public consumed art.

“It is necessary to conceive of new museums, outside the narrow limits and prescriptions of traditional museology: active organisms, not with the narrow purpose of informing, but of instructing, not a passive collection of things, but a continuous exhibition and interpretation of civilization (...)”

For both, museums should promote the unity of the arts by arousing curiosity in the public, with a universal, educational and unifying character. And also promote professional training in the areas of art, architecture and design.

At that time, they created the first Brazilian design school, the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (AIC), directed by Lina, and started the Costumes Section.
With fashion shows featuring pieces by Christian Dior taking place inside the museum, and even a piece designed by Salvador Dalí, the fashion collection that continues to grow today began.

“ Fashion is one of the most important activities in the field of art. (...) A beautiful outfit is worth as much as a good painting. Fashion is always the consequence of a way of thinking and living. ” - Pietro M. Bardi

Still at the beginning of the formation of the Costumes Section, in the 1950s, MASP held a new fashion show with pieces created entirely in the museum's workshops, inspired by fauna and flora, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures, and popular customs. With creations by Carybé, Burle Marx, Klara Hartoch, and Sambonet.

In the 1970s, the Costumes Department received an important donation of pieces from the Rhodia Collection. To promote the sale of its textiles, the large fabric company created collections in partnership with visual artists and fashion designers, and held high-quality editorials and fashion shows. Alfredo Volpi, Francisco Brennand, Manabu Mabe and Willys de Castro are some of the names involved. The collection, and especially the Rhodia collection, ended up becoming a kind of reference for Brazilian fashion.

In 2015, the museum exhibited the complete collection of the MASP Rhodia Collection for the first time. Soon after, in 2018, Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of MASP, decided to revitalize the project, now called the MASP Renner Collection. Lilian Pacce, assistant curator of the project, contacted our creative director, André Namitala, and artist and professor Ayrson Heráclito with the invitation to create three pieces together to be included in the collection.

André and Ayrson met for a few days and after many classes and exchanges of knowledge, in-depth research and the work of the Handred studio team, the three pieces are on display at the exhibition that will be at MASP until June 9. Other important duos are also present: Sonia Gomes and Gustavo Silvestre, Lidia Lisbôa and Fernanda Yamamoto, Beatriz Milhazes and Andrea Marques, Aline Bispo and Flavia Aranha, No Martins and Angela Brito, among many others. You can read more about each piece here .

“We can read the pieces in the MASP Renner project as fictions that condense memories, gestures, desires, movements and narratives scattered throughout social life. Much more than a social condition, clothing is a factor in the fictionalization of bodies and the opening up of other identities and expressions of the subject.” - Leandro Muniz, assistant curator.