Prague, Aug 10 (CTK) – The Kampa Museum in Prague centre will host a touring exhibition of more than 200 pairs of women’s shoes created by Spanish fashion designer with Czech roots, Manolo Blahnik, its organisers said at a press conference that Blahnik attended today.
Prague is the only destination of The Art of Shoes exhibition in Central Europe.
The iconic shoes, which many women know from films and TV series, such as the popular Sex and the City, will be on display in the Kampa Museum from August 11 until November 12.
The exhibition will also offer the designer’s drawings and visitors can learn how shoes are created from film shots that show Blahnik working in his studio.
The co-organisers of the event in the Czech Republic want to present Blahnik as a famous Czech emigrant as well.
Blahnik, 74, who grew up on the Canary Islands and now lives in Britain, has Czech roots. His Czech father lived and worked as a pharmacist in Prague, near Kampa where his son’s exhibition is installed now, before WWII. He left the country after the Nazi occupation.
The touring exhibition was staged in Milan, Italy, and in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. After Prague, it will move to Madrid and then to Toronto, Canada.
The display shows shoes as top works of decorative art, said Jiri Pospisil, member of the board of the Kampa Musuem – the Foundation of Jan and Meda Mladek.
Out of the 30,000 models in his private archive, Blahnik and the curator of the exhibition, Cristina Carillo de Albornoz, chose 212 pairs and 80 of his drawings. They depict his inspiration by architecture, art, botany, literature, cinematography, history and some countries, such as Russia, Italy and Spain.
The exhibition includes his works from the 1970s until the present. Its last part shows the Marie Antoinette collection of shoes that Blahnik created together with Italian costume designer Milena Canonero for the eponymous film directed by Sofia Coppola in 2006. Canonero won Oscar for the Best Costume Design in this film.
The display in Prague is divided into six parts according to the sources of Blahnik’s inspiration: geography, architecture, art, nature and materials as well as the author’s own imagination. The last section presents models dedicated to the personalities who influence Blahnik the most, such as Italian fashion writer and style icon Anna Piaggi, French actress Brigitte Bardot and Alexander the Great.
