SICIS Unveils the Bakst Capsule Mosaic Art Tile Collection

 

Perhaps due to the close relationship between the company and the city of Ravenna, a place rich in history and culture that boasts seven UNESCO cultural heritage monuments, SICIS has been nourished and inspired by the study and evolution of mosaic works.

As such, a deep passion for this ancient technique has been cultivated with care and new innovations – thanks to a team of skilled masters who have transformed SICIS into the largest artistic mosaic laboratory in the world. This magnetic attraction towards the greatest artists of the past and present has prompted the company to transform famous paintings into eternal mosaic interpretations.

In 1998, when the Commune of Rome involved SICIS into a great project: to decorate with mosaic art entire walls of the most important underground stations in Rome. It was the first use of mosaic art in this specific field, unlike the use of simple single-color tiles. The project, of international significance, brought together 27 contemporary artists from Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Spain, Russia, and other countries.

During the following years, SICIS transposed into mosaic representations of famous artworks by Arcimboldo, Klimt, and Jakuchu. As a sponsor of the Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, it created the internal artistic mosaic coverings for the Theater of Memory.

At the beginning of 2022, SICIS decided to face its new challenge — interpreting through glass tiles some artworks of one of the personalities that most characterized the fashion and design of the 1900s: Léon Bakst. It was during the search for new artists to represent that SICIS realized how deeply Europe had been influenced by this extraordinary character at the beginning of the century. Illustrator, portraitist and then set designer for the famous Ballet Russe, in his scenes and costumes he skillfully managed to combine the refinement of French symbolism with various popular traditions, achieving a success that seem to cross the borders of the old world.

SICIS has reproduced life-size versions of Bakst’s most celebrated drawings, including the costumes of “Cléopâtre”, “Narcisse”, “Carnaval” and “La Péri”. With incredible professionalism, combining ancient artisan techniques with new pictorial languages, the SICIS mosaic masters have been able to recreate the precious effects of Bakst’s drawings. Glossy, opaque, iridescent, and metallic glass materials that reinterpret the rich robes in silk, organza, brocade, and georgette, and the marvelous jewels in metals and precious stones, with which Léon Bakst loved to adorn the bodies of the dancers.

Bakst’s multifaceted personality, his ability to interpret beauty in the most diverse fields, from art, to fashion, to design, is what most attracted SICIS to create this extraordinary capsule collection.

View the Bakst collection here.