The exhibition can be visited until 8 September 2024 in Grosseto, in the spaces of the Le Clarisse cultural centre. Cappiello Style – The revolution of art posters is curated by Mirko Morinihead of the department of vintage posters at Cambi Aste in Milan, and by Mauro Papa, director of the Cultural Center. Investigating the art of posters today means investigating the history of customs and social relationships and, at the same time, investigating the very concept of art. Because the poster has been – perhaps even more than the paintings or sculptures with which we traditionally identify art objects – one of the most effective tools for aesthetic dissemination and artistic education of people, so much so that a famous poster designer, Achille Luciano Mauzandefined the advertising art of posters as “art for the people”.
In particular, the advertising art of Leonetto Cappiello (Livorno, 1875 – Cannes, 1942), one of the fathers of modern Italian poster art, represented a real revolution, not only for the beauty it expressed but because it subverted the way of seeing and therefore the sensitivity – and the perception of reality – of the public watching her. True revolutions are always, first of all, aesthetic revolutions. They create progress and create new languages, regardless of the contents they transmit.
And this revolution also touched Grosseto. The new figurative code proposed by Cappiello – the “Cappiello Style” – experienced three key moments in Grosseto: in the 1920s, when the art posters of Marcello Dudovich, Achille Luciano Mauzan, Aldo Mazza and Emilio Malerba; in the 1950s, when the “French and Italian” style of advertising posters was represented by Federico Seneca, Giovanni Mingozzi, Romolo Castiglioni, Nico Edel and Alfredo Laliaand finally – after the crisis of art posters in the Sixties – in the Seventies, when the Volterra Aulo Guidi he founded the first graphic and advertising agency in Grosseto and gave new impetus to this type of artistic production.
The central nucleus of the exhibition in Clarisse is therefore dedicated to the style of Leonetto Cappiello, favoring the works produced in a decade – that of the 1920s – which exactly a century ago saw the first illustrated posters arrive in Grosseto. The original works of Leonetto Cappiello (posters, but also sketches and other objects) are exhibited in Clarisse together with the posters of Dudovich, Ballerio, Hohenstain, but also of Depero, Sironi, Nizzoli and Marangoli in a path that goes from Liberty advertising to Cappiello’s lasting influence on post-war authors, from Armando Testa to the Seventies. One section, for example, is dedicated to Campari advertising, linking the two Campari posters signed by Cappiello with those of Depero, Nizzoli, Mauzan and Marangoli. All these works are owned by a single collector of Grosseto origin, Federico Guidoni.
Alongside the section of original posters, the numerous monitors of the Polo Le Clarisse display photographs – coming from the Gori, Bieffe and Innocenti photographic archives – which document urban views with advertising posters in Grosseto from the 1920s to the 1970s. To complete the exhibition itinerary, an exhibition section is dedicated to Aulo Guidi (Volterra, 1939 – Grosseto, 2012). Guidi, originally from Volterra, brought new techniques and new visions of creativity to the Maremma capital in the 1970s: a modern graphics laboratory (Ideogram, founded in 1970), a new way of understanding and producing art prints and a singular openness towards the new themes of advertising image.
Finally, the exhibition on art posters does not only involve the Le Clarisse cultural centre, but is “widespread” throughout the historic center of the city, with the setting up of two “off-exhibition” sections: the gallery of the antiques dealer Ticci, which for the occasion exhibits original paintings by Aleardo Villa (Revello 1865 – Milan 1906) and art posters of his era, and the Caffè Latino, which has its walls permanently decorated with large advertising posters signed by Leonetto Cappiello , Camille Bouchet, Mario Bazzi and Robert Wolff.
