An invitation-only opening will take place on 27 March 2026 at 6:00 PM. For spring 2026, the Labirinto della Masone (Parma, Italy) presents the exhibition ERTÉ. Style Is Everything, curated by Valerio Terraroli and organized by Elisa Rizzardi, offering the public an in-depth look at Erté—one of the world’s foremost exponents of Art Déco.
The exhibition aims to reveal both the complexity and the modernity of Erté’s artistic production through a carefully selected selection of works from across his career. Particular attention is given to the most original and fruitful period of his long activity—his works from the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s.
Roman Petrovič Tyrtov was born in Saint Petersburg in 1892. In 1912, still very young, he moved to Paris to pursue his artistic passions. There he naturalized his name as Romain de Tirtoff, from which the famous pseudonym “Erté” emerged—derived from the French pronunciation of the initials of his name.
Between 1913 and 1914, Erté worked for the couturier Paul Poiret. In 1915, he began a long and successful collaboration with the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, for which he created around two hundred covers until 1937. Through this work, he entered the world of entertainment and the celebrity system of the time, producing stage designs and costumes for legendary figures such as Mata Hari, Marion Davies, and Mistinguett, as well as for performances at the famed Folies Bergère.
During the 1920s and 1930s, his illustrations were also published in major publications such as London News, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue, as well as in music-oriented magazines. In 1922, he arrived in New York, collaborating for years with producer George White, and in 1925 he reached Hollywood, working on sets and costumes for silent films.
Across his career, Erté was not only a versatile designer and costume creator, but also a jewelry maker and an illustrator for leading international fashion publications in 1910s and 1920s Paris. He developed a refined and unmistakable visual language, synthesizing the distinctive decorative traits of the interwar modern world. Today, he is widely considered an emblematic figure of Art Déco taste, with works held in major museums, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to LACMA in Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
In 1970, Franco Maria Ricci published the first major Italian-language monograph dedicated to Erté in the series I segni dell’uomo, featuring a text by Roland Barthes and a selection of memories from the artist. At the time, the publisher also acquired several works, which now form part of the collection preserved at the Labirinto della Masone—recently expanded with four additional drawings, which will be showcased in this exhibition.
As Barthes wrote in 1970:
“Erté’s mythology is so pure, so full that one no longer knows (and no longer asks) whether he created the woman of his era or whether he brilliantly captured her—whether he is a witness or the founder of a story, a hero or a mythologist.”
The exhibition—designed by Maddalena Casalis—presents more than 150 works, including drawings, preparatory sketches, pochoir prints, lithographs, the celebrated Alphabet and Number series, vintage photographs, archival documents, and cinematic materials. Also included are the 28 works from the Franco Maria Ricci Collection, alongside significant loans from Italian and international private collections and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The installation is highly scenographic, immersing visitors in Erté’s visual universe through thematic sections that explore the artist’s main fields of activity: from fashion figures to the world of theatre and Music Hall, as well as his major editorial collaborations.
Erté’s graphic inventions became icons of a dazzling Déco in which modernity and exoticism coexist: impossible elegance, figurines of women who are simultaneously contemporary and “femme fatale,” and costumes for theatre and cinema—from the Folies Bergère to the Ziegfeld Follies. At the same time, Erté acted as a keen observer of his era, capturing shifts in fashion and the legendary world of the diva, balancing high elegance with mass culture while maintaining rigorous stylistic coherence.
As Valerio Terraroli notes:
“The rapid collapse of European political balance and the outbreak of the Second World War bring the definitive disappearance of the formal and aesthetic values of Déco—and with them that splendid fairy-tale world, disengaged and irresponsible, glittering and uninhibited, foolish and ambiguously erotic, refined and seductive. Erté embodied it both in his own life and in his creations, which therefore become one of the most refined and organic emblems of Art Déco.”
To highlight the continuing relevance of Erté’s work, the exhibition also features three creations by Caterina Crepax, inspired by the artist. Trained as an architect and raised in a highly creative environment, Crepax makes paper dresses that function like sculptures—unique pieces in which paper becomes a precious “fabric,” with its textures forming wearable works of art.
For this exhibition, Crepax created three new garments inspired by three Erté sketches, paying tribute to this master of style.
As customary for exhibitions at the Labirinto della Masone, an accompanying volume will be published by Franco Maria Ricci, featuring texts by Valerio Terraroli and Alessandra Tiddia.
Photo credits: Labirinto della Masone.
On the cover: Franco Maria Ricci e Erté, Anni Settanta, Archivio Fondazione Franco Maria Ricci, Labirinto della Masone, Fontanellato (Pr)
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