Summer 2023: Jacopozzi's illuminations exhibited in Shanghai
More than two hundred photographs of the Eiffel Tower illuminated by Fernand Jacopozzi, together with a 3.30-metre drawing of the 1925 lighting design, exhibited in Shanghai as part of the 'Paris Moderne' exhibition.
Summer 2023. The “Paris Moderne” exhibition in Shanghai brings Fernand Jacopozzi’s illuminations to an international audience on an unprecedented scale.
What the exhibition shows
More than two hundred photographs of the Eiffel Tower illuminated by Jacopozzi are on display — a selection drawn from the family archives and French public collections. They show the Tower from every angle, in every one of its animations: the dress of stars, the comets, the name CITROËN.
The centrepiece: a 3.30-metre-high drawing of the Eiffel Tower lighting design for the 1925 Decorative Arts Exhibition — as Jacopozzi conceived and presented it to André Citroën.
The context
The illumination was entirely financed by André Citroën, who refused to allow the name of a foreign company — Ford had come close to accepting — to appear on a French symbol. That choice gave birth to the first great illuminated advertisement in history.
The Shanghai exhibition demonstrates that this story is universal: a Florentine engineer, a French industrialist, an iron tower — and a light visible forty kilometres away.
A century later, these images travel the world.