The Breuninger Shoe Store in Stuttgart, Germany

The Breuninger Shoe Store in Stuttgart, Germany installed this ‘homage to the madness of women about buying shoes’ by Dutch artist John Breed, who created this colourful installation. Built in a vast complex, formerly an industrial space, it is the largest in Europe.

Representing the obsession that most women have with accessories, especially shoes, the artwork of wall mounted legs, is based on the head of Medusa with her hair of waving snakes, but to add a more feminine and seductive aspect to his work, he replaced the snakes with 145 multi-coloured female legs, each one wearing a different shoe. After spending days mixing the paint in a rainbow of graduating shades, he painted each leg and shoe, the former with a slight difference to the latter, a reference to the habit of women to buy shoes very similar to the ones they already own!