Saint Louis Art Museum to Honor Art, Fashion and 12 Historic French Automobiles
The Saint Louis Art Museum will featuring an exhibit called Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939 from April 12 — July 27, 2025. It will explore the transformative role of the automobile in pre–World War II France and will highlight innovations across art and industry by those who embraced it as a provocative expression of the modern age. This expansive exhibition will feature paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, films, fashion, textiles, and 12 historic automobiles.
Early 20th-century France attracted visionaries from across the globe with creative and economic opportunities. Fusing craft and technology, automobiles absorbed and influenced facets of modern art, design, fashion, and architecture. After World War I, cars—long the domain of engineers—met the minds and hands of French designers, artists, and craftspeople. Materials and techniques moved fluidly between sumptuous Art Deco interiors and luxury automobiles. Avant-garde showrooms, glittering displays, and thrilling races helped market the thousands of cars driving off assembly lines. Those same factories became centers of a labor movement that brought paid vacations and efficient automobiles to French workers.
In cars, artists discovered novel perspectives, subject matter, and even canvases. As driving became more comfortable, motoring fashions evolved into stylish wardrobe staples. Magazines portrayed liberated women dressed in knit sportswear driving convertibles. When fashions streamlined, so did cars. Embodying aerodynamics and natural forms, the sculptural curves of 1930s French custom, coach-built automobiles are unrivaled today. With an open, interdisciplinary approach, Roaring illuminates the rich ecosystems that nourished this golden age of French automotive design.
Divided into six sections, the exhibition assembles more than 160 works, comprising major loans from prominent institutions and private collections around Europe and North America. Roaring is accompanied by a 210-page exhibition catalogue with contributions from seven authors.
Roaring is curated by Genevieve Cortinovis, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, with research assistant Sarah Berg and automobile curation by Ken Gross, automotive historian and former director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
A full event schedule and ticket purchasing can be found here: https://www.slam.org/exhibitions/roaring-art-fashion-and-the-automobile-in-france/