French Italian artist Leonetto Cappiello is considered the father of modern advertising poster design. He revolutionized the design and brought new ideas that successfully captured the attention of passersby. Without previous training, when France was dominated by the Art Nouveau style and works by Alphonse Mucha, Jules Cheret, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Cappiello refused to follow the trends. Instead of intricate designs, the artist decided to put his colorful subject against a simple black background, which created a bold contrast. Today Cappiello's works are part of several international collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Cappiello (born in 1875 Tuscany) moved to Paris in 1898 and, without formal training, began working for renowned magazines of the time as an illustrator. Many of his caricatures were published in such magazines as Le Sourire, Le Rire, La Baionnette and L’Assiette au Beurre. In his early works, the influence of the Toulouse-Lautrec style is quite apparent. In 1902 for the L'Assiette au Beurre magazine, the artist published a book of his caricatures titled Gens du Monde and a year later Le Théâtre de Cappiello for the Le Théâtre magazine. Even though he enjoyed a successful career as a caricature artist, Cappiello slowly began leaning toward poster design.
In 1900 the artist began working for the printer Pierre Vercasson who was looking for something new that would put him above the competition. When Vercasson saw Cappiello's poster for the magazine Frou-Frou, he knew he had found the right designer. For the next ten years, the artist created over 100 posters that changed the way poster design was viewed.
Leonetto Cappiello was a non-conformist, refusing to bow down to the requirements of the Art Nouveau style that ruled the French poster scene. A true innovator, he quickly realized that the best way to achieve the desired effect was to create a popping design that immediately caught the audience's attention. For this reason, he rejected the intricate details of Art Nouveau posters in favor of a more simplistic and effective design.
The bold subjects, such as mythological creatures, Comedia del Arte characters, and dancers, the artist drew in a bright palette against a dark background, thus creating a shock effect. The revolutionary poster design proved to be the most effective in drawing attention and building a brand.
Some of the most recognizable works by Cappiello are the French wine ad titled Maurin Quina (1906), lespirates (1910), Italian vermouth ad, and Thermogène (1909) ad for a cough and rheumatism remedy. The artist has, throughout his career, created over 500 advertisement posters. After World War I, he began working for the Devambez, a Parisian publisher, who for the next several decades found clients for the artist from all over Europe, which helped the artist gain international recognition. Leonetto Cappiello passed away in 1942 in Cannes.
Featured image: Leonetto Cappiello - Le Frou Frou (detail), 1899. Captions, via Creative Commons
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