The Genius of the Italian Poster - Opera & The Rise of the Italian Poster

The rise of the Italian poster is tied to the opera, the only national cultural institution in Italy at the turn of the century. Ricordi, the music publisher created an in-house printing operation in 1874. They installed the most advanced German lithographic presses.

Poster Designer Hohenstein is often called the "Father of the Italian Poster." Hohenstein's La Boheme of 1895 was his first great Italian opera poster. With its classically rich color harmonies and use of strong diagonals for impact, the poster showed traits which would increasingly distinguish Italian poster art.

This was the first of many large, dramatic and masterful opera posters Hohenstein would create. The 10-feet- tall 1896 poster for Puccini's Tosca echoed the melodrama, passion and spectacle of Italian opera. This was followed 1898 by posters for Mascagni's Iris and Madama Butterfly in 1904. These posters, became the foundation for an Italian poster tradition.

By 1895, Ricordi was creating posters for Campari, Corriere della Sera, and the Mele department store of Naples. With more than 180 large- format posters Mele was one of the most important poster series of all time.

At the turn of the century, artists such as Aleardo Villa, Marcello Dudovich, Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Aleardo Terzi, Achille Mauzan and Giovanni Mataloni brought Art Nouveau, known as Stile Liberty in Italy, to a world class level.

Leopoldo Metlicovitz came to Ricordi as a lithographer's assistant in 1891, and within a year became its technical director. He went on to become Ricordi's most prolific artist and its artistic director.

His prize-winning design for the 1906 International Exposition marked the opening of a locomotive tunnel through the Alps, is a dramatic portrayal of Mercury riding the engine on its maiden voyage. His image of Mercury racing alongside an automobile for Mostra del Ciclo e dell Automobile (1907) is a masterpiece of poster art.

Marcello Dudovich rapidly developed the reputation as the leading poster artist in Italy, and did no less than 14 masterpieces for Mele. His style eliminated Art Nouveau excesses for a more modern style. His work he achieved a richness and monumentality scarcely achieved before or since in poster art.

Leonetto Cappiello is known as the father of modern advertising. Cappiello was the first to realize that a simple metaphor for a product could make a poster more memorable. His posters produced for Italian clients are among his rarest and best.

After World War I Italian Modernism adopted Cubism as starting point, the Italian Futurists invented devices such as "lines of force" to indicate the dynamism of high speed motion and the industrial age.
Futurism proved too aggressive for most of Italian society and its consumer advertising.

A group of artists called Novecento formed in 1922, this group was a reaction to the Futurists, and looked back to the simplicity of pre-war values and Italian tradition.

By the mid '20s Art Deco became the prominent style. It was an international style which combined Machine Age symbolism, Cubism, and exotic design from ancient Egypt, Crete and Greece. What resulted was a simplified, geometric style which romanticized and transformed everyday reality.
In Italy, this style was uniquely influenced by Futurism. The Futurist preoccupation with speed, power and dynamism was readily expressed in the new style.
There was a remarkable outpouring of highly original and diverse Italian graphic design. Artists Cappiello and Dudovich, created more than 100 designs for Italy’s leading department store Rinascente from the '20s through the '40s.

Federico Seneca, the advertising director for Perugina-Buitoni from 1919 to 1929, created stylized, tubular figures which revealed the influence of Leger. Equally strong was the work of Severo Pozzati, or Sepo who worked primarily in Paris and created masterpieces for Noveltex shirts and Motta bakery.

The dominate corporate clients of the inter-war years were Fiat and Campari. By the '20s, Fiat was the largest car company in Europe, and was the first to open an advertising department. Its artists were the best Italy had to offer.

Campari continued its remarkable tradition of advertising posters through the '50s. It commissioned posters for exhibitions, conferences, parades and other events.
Artist Xanti Schawinsky, brought Bauhaus training to use in posters for Princeps & Illy Coffee. A sophisticated graphic language was also cultivated at Olivetti,

After WWII, Italian  style in every field from automobiles to fashion design became recognized worldwide. In poster art, spectacular images werecreated for the Italian film industry. Masters of the Italian film poster included Anselmo Ballester, Alfredo Capitani, Luigi Martinati and Ercole Brini.

The leading advertising poster artist of these years was Armando Testa, who created classic campaigns for Punt e Mes, Carpano, Pirelli, and the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.