El Museo del Barrio will present on the 14th of June ‘Antonio Lopez: Future Funk Fashion’, an exhibition on the work of fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez. The exhibition will explore various aspects of the work of this important artist, developing thematic sections that focus on high fashion illustration, his relationship to particular models, his shoe and jewelry designs, and images of people he came to know and love from the streets of New York City.
Lopez illustrated fashions for Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Times and eventually became a free-lance artist for many of the top fashion publications, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Andy Warhol’s Interview. He collaborated with the noted designer Charles James, creating an illustrated inventory of James’ fashion designs (now in the collection of the Chicago History Museum). With his friend and business partner, Juan Ramos, Lopez moved to Paris where they both worked with Karl Lagerfeld and many other designers.
Through his work, Lopez made great strides in exploring and representing the ethnic or racialized body within the world of high fashion. His imagery helped underscoring a new canon of beauty throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He died in New York of complications related to AIDS on March 17, 1987 at the age of 44.
A team of art historians, scholars from various disciplines, as fashion, gender and communications studies, and other experts will participate in the organization of this exhibition. The show’s co-curators are Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Curator at El Museo del Barrio and Amelia Malagamba-Ansótegui, a scholar from Arizona State University and University of Texas San Antonio. In 2003, Dr. Malagamba wrote an important essay on Antonio Lopez for the Smithsonian Institute, which continues to be a key text today for the ways in which it explores Lopez’s attentiveness to race, gender and the body in general.

For more information, please visit El Museo del Barrio.

Photo: “ANTONIO LOPEZ: Future Funk Fashion” at El Museo del Barrio, all rights reserved.