FuturLiberty: Liberty Fabrics and the Avant-Garde

A unique exploration of the close relationship between art and design, explored through the historic and contemporary fabric designs of Liberty, where avant-garde art has influenced the colourful, geometric collections for more than half a century

Liberty is renowned internationally for its fabrics, especially its floral patterns, but it also has a long history of developing bold, geometric designs. Many of these have been inspired by early 20th-century avant-garde art, notably by the Italian Futurists – by artists such as Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni – and their English contemporaries the Vorticists, including Christopher Nevinson and Edward Wadsworth.

In anticipation of Liberty’s 150th anniversary, esteemed couturier and interior designer Federico Forquet has curated a striking new range of fabrics – the FuturLiberty Collection – that carries Liberty’s creative heritage into our own age.

The Futurist and Vorticist art that lies behind the new designs is explored by specialists Ester Coen and Richard Cork, while archivist Anna Buruma examines Liberty’s rich history of avant-garde designs. By illuminating the process by which the FuturLiberty Collection came into being, this highly visual study also reveals how art can inform design, making it contemporary, relevant and engaging.

About the Author:

Ester Coen is an expert on Italian Futurism and the international avant-garde. She has been Associate Professor at the University of Florence and Professor at the universities of Udine and L’Aquila. Richard Cork is an art historian, critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been an art critic for the Evening Standard, The Listener, The Times and the New Statesman, and is a past Turner Prize judge.