Miuccia Prada and Gertrude Stain: two iconic women with the same attitude for art

Looking together at these two portraits of the famous writer Gertrude Stain made by Picasso (left)and of Miuccia Prada by John Baldessari (right) it’s very interesting to notice the choice of the artists to represent their figures standing in a very similar way and this particular can moreover suggest something meaningful about their personality. We can’t know if they have an alike personality, but certainly they both have a really pundit taste in art and they also had regularly frequented different of the most influential artist of their time. As Gertrude was used to meet Picasso and Matisse at least two times a week, Miuccia is closely linked to Francesco Vezzoli, Carsten Holler, John Baldessari and Germano Celant (the curator of her foundation). Nevertheless the interest of the two women extends also in architecture: Stein lived in an avant-garde house designed by Le Corbusier, meanwhile Prada instructed the worldwide famous architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & De Meuron to design the stores of her clothing brand and together with the first one she conceived the Transformer Pavilion’s project, built last year in Seoul (South Korea). In the end although they have practised a different job we have to recognize that they have become in the same way two iconic figures of their time with the innate ability of catalyzing the attention of the most important artists among their contemporary, establishing with them unique relationships and boosting their careers enormously.