Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942) Italian/French, Framed Campari Poster. Depicts a clown holding a bottle of Campari floating inside the wound peel of an orange above the words "Bitter Campari."

Overall: 56 1/2 x 43 3/4 in.

Sight: 50 1/4 x 37 3/4 in.

#2375. 

Leonetto Cappiello was born in 1875 in Livorno, Tuscany, Italy. Although he had no formal artistic training, his work was first shown in a municipal museum in Florence in 1892. Frustrated by the attitude of academically trained artists in the region, he created scathing caricatures of them, which were published in an album called Lantera Magica. The editor of the French journal Le Rire saw them and invited him to work for them, prompting him to move permanently to France in 1898. Over the next several years he published further caricatures for Le Cri de Paris, Le Sourire, Femina, and more, and it was his collaboration with Le Théâtre magazine that led him away from caricature into poster design. At the time, posters created by artists like Jules Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were mostly done in the Belle Epoch style, with bright backgrounds, jovial ethereal characters, and soft, elegant wording. Cappiello was the first poster artist to use bold figures popping out of black backgrounds, a startling contrast to the norm.  He is now often referred to as “the father of modern advertising” thanks to his innovations. He married Suzanne Meyer Cappiello in 1901 and returned to Italy briefly during World War I to work as an interpreter for the military. Upon returning to France, a chance meeting with the printer Andre Davambez led to his most famous works for alcohol, chocolate and other luxury goods like Campari, Pirelli, and Poudre de Luzy. Over the course of his career Cappiello produced more than 530 advertising posters, often at 500 francs per piece. He died in Cannes in 1942, and today his original posters are still fervently collected, sold at auction and by dealers around the world.