Leonetto Cappiello
Encyclopedia
Leonetto Cappiello is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
– 2. February 1942 in Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) was an Italian poster art designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
who lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He is now often called 'the father of modern advertising' because of his innovation in poster design. The early advertising poster was characterized by a painterly quality as evidenced by early poster artists Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret was a French painter and lithographer who became a master of Belle Époque poster art. He has been called the father of the modern poster. -Biography:...
, Alfred Choubrac and Hugo D'Alesi. Cappiello, like other young artists, worked in way that was almost the opposite of his predecessors. He was the first poster artist to use bold figures popping out of black backgrounds, a startling contrast to the posters early norm.
Cappiello had no formal training in art. The first exhibition of his work was in 1892, when a painting was displayed at the municipal museum in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
.
Caricatures
Cappiello started his career as a caricaturist illustrating in journals like Le RireLe Rire
Le Rire, or "Laughter," was a successful humor magazine published from October 1894 through the 1950s. Founded in Paris during the Belle Époque by Felix Juven, Le Rire appeared as typical Parisians began to achieve more education, income and leisure time. Interest in the arts, culture and politics...
, Le Cri de Paris, Le Sourire, L'Assiette au Beurre, La Baionnette, Femina, and others. His first album of caricatures, "Lanterna Magica," was made in 1896. In 1898, he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and his caricatures were published in Le Rire for the first time.
In 1902, a 24-page book of his caricatures was published entitled Gens du Monde ‘people of high society’ for the magazine L’Assiette au Beurre. The following year a 38-page book entitled Le Théâtre de Cappiello ‘the theatre of Cappiello’ was published for a special issue of Le Théâtre magazine, this included captions written by theatre critics. Cappiello began to move away from caricature work favouring posters. In 1905 a final publication 70 Dessins de Cappiello ’70 drawings by Cappiello’ by H. Floury, included black and white lithographic prints, as well as a handful of colour images produce by the process of pochoir. The technique was popular at the time as a way of adding colour to an image relatively cheaply, and would involve colour being hand painted onto an image with stencils.
Cappiello made his name during the poster boom period in the early 20th century, with designs markedly different from premier poster artist Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret was a French painter and lithographer who became a master of Belle Époque poster art. He has been called the father of the modern poster. -Biography:...
. His first poster, for the newspaper Frou-Frou, was made in 1899.
Vercasson
Cappiello’s career as a poster artist began in earnest in 1900 when he began a contract with the printerPrinter (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
Pierre Vercasson. In this period, the printers would act as an agent for artists and commission work to them. Vercasson had a print house, and his goal was to bring vibrant and colour to the streets of Paris, he wanted the posters that he produced to stand out from the rest and attract lucrative new advertisers to his agency. Of course living in Paris, he was aware of the current art scene, and had seen many examples of Cappiello’s work, including a small number of posters already produced and in particular those for Le Frou-Frou. He knew that Cappiello had the potential to be exactly what he was looking for. The relationship commenced with the arrangement that Vercasson would find the clients and brief Cappiello on the product. It was then up to Cappiello to produce a sketch for the client for which he would receive the fee of 500 francs, a good amount at the time. Once the design had been approved by the client a full size design would be produce for the poster at a size of 1x1.4m, an old French paper standard known as the Double Grand Aigle. Cappiello would also be responsible for ensuring the successful transfer of the design onto lithographic stone ready for printing.
He was married to Suzanne Meyer Cappiello in 1901 and his brother Oreste was married to Camille, sister of the painter Alfredo Müller
Alfredo Müller
Alfredo Müller was a Franco-Italian painter and engraver.As a painter from Livorno, he belonged to the group of the Postmacchiaioli, together with Mario Puccini, Oscar Ghiglia, Plinio Nomellini, Ulvi Liegi, Giovanni Bartolena, and others, and as a French engraver, he was close to Francis Jourdain,...
.
Between 1901 and 1914, he created several hundred posters in a style that revolutionised the art of poster design. Cappiello redesigned the fin-de-siècle pictures into images more relevant to the faster pace of the 20th century. During this period, Capiello continued as a caricaturist.
Devambez
After the First World War Cappiello returned to producing posters. In 1919 he began working with a new publisher, DevambezDevambez
Devambez is the name of a fine printer's firm in Paris. It operated under that name from 1873, when a printing business established by the royal engraver Hippolyte Brasseux in 1826 was acquired by Édouard Devambez. At first the firm specialized in heraldic engraving, engraved letterheads and...
, indicating the second period in his career. Unlike Vercasson, Devambez did not have its own print house, and had the posters printed at a number of large printers. The agency concentrated on finding new clients from across Europe, and successfully spread Cappiello’s celebrated works across the continent. He remained with the agency until 1936.