Antonio
Stage name of Antonio Lopez (1943-1986), a designer and illustrator. He was one of the great names of the 20th century. One need only remember that at the time his work first appeared in the New York Times, Women’s Wear Daily, and Vogue, drawing and illustration seemed to be finished as a way of documenting the world of fashion, totally supplanted by photography. Antonio made them live again. It was the 1970s. A native of Puerto Rico, the son of a dressmaker and a manufacturer of mannequins, he moved to New York in 1961 to study at the High School of Industrial Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Decisive for his career was a meeting with the designer Charles James. He began during the era of Pop Art, and this would influence his style, his method of composition, and the feminine type that is a recurring element in his work. Yet he never put his style above the attention to detail and the concern for legibility that made his illustrations strong, innovative and absolutely his own.