On the occasion of Lineapelle (February 2017), Tessitura Attilio Imperiali and Segre & Schieppati will be presenting the initiative involving artists, writers and illustrators. An explosion of pigments, alchemies and visual stimuli combining art and craftsmanship.

The project develops over three main stages:

February: the start of a journey. The Contemporary Canvases project of Tessitura Attilio Imperiali and Segre & Schieppati sets sail and goes out to sea. A route passing through the whole of the year 2017, interweaving art and fashion, tying together the dates of Lineapelle with a dialogue with creativity.

May: a residency. Four artists will be coming into the Company, exploring its spaces, getting to know the environment, production cycles, emotional stimuli and materials. Different identities for different models: each artist will be taking an example from the shoes and bags offered, receiving the punch for the work and investigating its style. This will be the start of the creative process: a real happening of 48 hours. Lines, symbols, geometries, sketches, watercolours. The silks of Tessitura Attilio Imperiali and the canvases of Segre & Schieppati will be accommodating the doodles and lettering of Marcella Ballarin, with the collage illustrations of Benedetta Bertolini, the dark romanticism of Richard Blackstar and the underground fables of Marzia Nais (bio attached). The visions of the four young artists will be taking on shape and colour on the Raso Imperiali 1004 and Canvas Olona 3212 fabrics, the leading products of Tessitura Attilio Imperiali and of Segre & Schieppati, companies that have always been in tune with a love of tradition, quality and Made in Italy, and that now merge in a new shared synergic project. Hands and inks will create large-scale works, with strongly contemporary contaminations, which will then find their way into punches, paper patterns, shoe uppers, and become finished prototypes. The cottons and silks will in this way become the perfect place for artistic expression, the ideal stage for a narrative of images.

The artists will be followed by professional photographers and a video crew that will be following them in the residency and documenting the creative hotbed where they will be working.

September: an exhibition. The results will then be presented, during the next Lineapelle show, between the walls of the Tessitura Attilio Imperiali booth. Each artist’s path will be on show, in three stages: the large canvas with the original drawing, the punch on which the artistic operation was concentrated and, lastly, the prototype made. In a continual exchange between material and experimentation, between research and design, between identity and story. Between fashion and art. The journey of Contemporary Canvases will be narrated in its every stage on print, the web and social media to create a constant conversation with the general public.

Contemporary Canvases will be sailing beyond the sector borders of the brand to become a booklet, a small publication, a story of words and pictures to narrate the journey travelled. And this will only be the first landing. To then set off again with a new edition and new ideas. In exactly a year.