Cinzia Ruggeri

Cinzia Ruggeri was an Italian designer and artist renowned for her postmodern and surreal fashion creations.

Bigraphy of Cinzia Ruggeri

Cinzia Ruggeri was born in 1942 in Milan, Italy. She embarked on her distinctive creative journey in 1960, debuting at the age of 17 with her first exhibition at Galleria del Prisma in Milan, featuring an accompanying text by Dino Buzzati.

From 1963 to 1965, she studied Design at Accademia delle Arti Applicate in Milan. During the 1960s and 1970s, she assumed the role of design director at Unimac Spa, her father's company. 

Ruggeri was aligned with the Radical Design movement in Milan during the seventies, drawn to the boundary-breaking fusion of architecture, art, fashion, and design. However, she maintained independence from the emerging groups and labels of the post-modernist era.

In 1977, she embarked on her own collection, envisioning garments as architectural spaces to be inhabited. Expanding her creative endeavors, she introduced the Cinzia Ruggeri experimental line in 1981, followed by Cinzio Menswear in 1986. Additionally, she imparted her expertise as a teacher at Milan's Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.

Cinzia Ruggeri received the Fil d’Or Award from Confédération Internationale du Lin in 1981, 1982, and 1983. In 1981, she also participated in the Venice Biennale in Italy. 

Ruggeri passed away in 2019, and three years later, in 2022, her first major retrospective, titled "Cinzia says...", was hosted at the Museo MACRO in Rome. Other solo exhibitions of Cinzia Ruggeri's works include "La Leggerezza del Peso" at Emanuela Campoli in Paris (2023), "Cinzia Ruggeri...per non restare immobili" at Casa Masaccio / Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea in San Giovanni Valdarno (2020), "Déconnexion" at Campoli Presti in Paris (2019), and many more. 

Cinzia Ruggeri's Art Style

Cinzia Ruggeri is recognized for integrating technology into her clothing designs. Her artistic vision merges fashion with sculpture, performance, and architecture. Her creations feature unconventional materials such as glass, ping pong balls, felt, and cowry. Additionally, she incorporates elements like liquid crystal, LEDs, and polarized lights into her works.

Her fashion presentations were renowned for their theatricality, featuring light and music.

Ruggeri's furniture and objects sought to extend the connection between the animated and the utilitarian. Examples include a glove adorned with pen tips resembling nails, a mirror adorned with protruding hands, or cats with LED-illuminated eyes and mustaches lounging on an armchair. These creations transport surrealism's realm of uncanny symbols into a collection of objects that appear to unleash their suppressed content in a displaced, fantastical manner.