Vittoria Crespi Morbio

Discovered in 1945 by Christian Bérard and instantly launched by Jean Cocteau as a star of French culture and society, André Beaurepaire, just over 20, was an apparition of dazzling charm and boundless imagination. He was immediately called upon for their own creations by Cocteau himself, Frederick Ashton, Roland Petit, Louise de Vilmorin, Jean Genet, Gian Carlo Menotti, his name was sought after by the Scala and the Paris Opera, his drawings shown in London and New York. His highly original style, without masters or pupils, illustrated Stravinsky’s and Prokofiev’s music, but Edith Piaf’s songs, too. Today Beaurepaire, still active in his Paris studio, still an irresistible enfant terrible, is the last witness of a homogeneous artistic world in which 20th-century European culture achieved an ephemeral and brilliant apogee