Tito (Ettore)

Paris, , 1927.
one of a series of four proverbs, very much conveying the spirit of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, of art deco elegance and decadence, showing independent young women defying outdated conventions of social behaviour and fashion. Here, the proverb means ‘heaven helps those who help themselves’, depicting an uninhibited young woman setting about repairing her sports car at the roadside, lying underneath it with her skirt riding up to reveal her stockings, but meanwhile sheltered from the falling rain.

The Italian artist, Ettore Tito (1859-1941), had already established a successful career in the later 19th century as a landscape and genre painter. He was a member of the Italian Royal Academy, and in the early 20th century had won the Grand Prix for painting at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, in San Francisco, in 1915. So, it was a relatively late transition to this more decorative, illustrative style of the French art deco fashion publications, such as ‘La Gazette de Bon Ton’, and ‘Art, Goût, Beauté’..