The original enfant terrible and darling of couture royalty, Puerto Rican born Antonio Lopez was a graduate of FIT in New York and parlayed a talent for dazzling illustration into a lucrative career and heady lifestyle.  Incorporating the current trends in art into his depiction of fashion in the late 60s, he was not averse to mixing media within the same piece sometimes using a combination of pencil, pen and ink, charcoal and watercolour to achieve the desired emphasis on detail. His life in Paris in the 70s was the gateway to the beautiful people and served as inspiration for much of his work – credited with having discovered Jerry Hall, Grace Jones and Tina Chow, when he wasn’t drawing he was a more than willing participant in the riotous extravagance that was the dawn of the disco era. 

Gowns for Anna Piaggi Vanity

It is twenty-five years since Lopez passed away from complications related to Kaposi’s Sarcoma during the height of the AIDS epidemic and fitting that both a retrospective exhibition, “Antonio’s World”, at Suzanne Geiss Company in Soho and a book by Rizzoli, “Antonio: Fashion, Art, Sex, & Disco”, are presenting his work to the generation that had forgotten of his existence and those who never knew of his incredible legacy to the art of illustration in the fashion world.

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Antonio Lopez
Slideshow: Antonio Lopez Opening