HISTORY OF THE POSTER
If the words of Guillaume Apollinaire: “You go out into the streets and find twentieth century poetry stuck on the walls” confirms the link between art and advertising…
As the industrial revolution became established, the search for new markets, mass production, the “democratisation” of goods and industrial products made advertising essential.
It should be stressed how the Italian term for poster, “manifesto”, indicates the purpose of use, “to make known”, “to make aware of”, contrary to other languages, e.g. affiche in French, poster in English or plakat in German that only indicate the methods of posting.
The typical “fin de siècle” style spread from France throughout Europe. In England it was personified by Aubrey Beardsley, in Belgium by Henry Van De Velde, in the Czech Republic by the great Alphonse Mucha, in Germany by Lucian Bernhard and Ludwig Hohlwein and in Italy by the great artistic school of Hohenstein, at Ricordi in Milan.
The Bauhaus was created capable of integrating various artistic and craft activities, and connecting art to mass production. Forays into the advertising world came from unexpected artists, such as Edouard Manet, Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalì, Henry Matisse, Edvard Munch, Renè Magritte and lastly Toulouse Lautrec.
LABELS
The label, the first form of advertising which enabled the wine being served to be recognised, brought the bottle into the oenological world associated with its producer, whose emblem, initials or coat of arms was clearly stamped in relief on the bottle neck.
The oldest labels in Italy are those of Marsala wine, bottles of which supplied the Royal House of Bourbon and Buckingham Palace.
The labels not only highlighted the quality of the wine, they also added a decorative appearance.: not merely printed friezes, but also figures, landscapes, views of the companies, awards and reproductions of the producer’s family coat of arms.
Many of the images designed for the posters were obviously reused to create the labels. Some of the images used for labels of famous wines attributed to Ernesto Basile, exponent of Palermo’s Liberty style, can be seen in those of Curatolo Arini, with which the Marsala wines of this House were circulated throughout the world.
As the years passed, the producers’ pride increased and with it the desire to boast a label which showed honourable mentions, medals, trophies and plaques won during national and international Exhibitions.
HISTORY OF THE MARSALA POSTER
In the late nineteenth century and with the rise of the Belle Époque, “mass” communication began to match widespread information about events or commercial products with the use of graphics and painting.
All the credit for the idea that the new advertising methods could offer great opportunities goes to the Marsala entrepreneurship of the period, ahead of its time with a perfect understanding of every form of advertising communication: cards, brochures, tin plaques. In a transnational style that used various combinations to speak a common language to the European capital cities
These were the makings of the first Marsala wine posters, created in the 19th century for the Florio, Woodhouse and Martinez factories.
From the early twentieth century to the 1930s, the wine producers Florio, Martinez and Carloalberto Anselmi made great use of a series of posters of the period.
European Art Nouveau began in Palermo with the Florio family, who left a tangible mark on the world of art, culture and economics. The Florio family was one of the mot illustrious and most powerful families in Italy at the time, but also a model for the Central European élite to imitate.
Thanks to them, Sicily was culturally reborn and a new constructive pathway began.
It was mainly thanks to Ignazio Florio Jr., but above all to his very beautiful wife, Franca Jacona, his advisor and ambassadress, that Palermo experienced the Belle Époque as protagonist on a par with European cities, together with the majority of international European “High society”.
Led by the Englishman, Giuseppe Gordon, from 1890 the production potential of “Marsala Florio” reached its peak, linking the town of Marsala with the European capitals in the world of economics and iconography.
Jean D’Ylen from the great French school of advertising designed the so-called peacock woman for Florio.
Achille Mauzan used his unmistakeable style to design the advertising characters with cheerful, smiling, clown-like faces against black backgrounds that brought the image to the forefront with the captions reduced to the basic minimum.
In the early twentieth century, Marcello Dudovich created a series of posters for Florio, amongst which a brightly coloured mask for Florio S.O.M. and the “fan” girl. This artist also designed an allegorical poster for Ingham of a woman-goddess squeezing a bunch of grapes watched by an inquisitive putto.
Over the years, there were numerous portrayals of the “lion drinking” from the spring where the quinine plant grows that harks back to Florio’s early successes. It was the company’s first logo and directly associated with the name as the image incorporated the entire message. One of the posters was designed by Luigi Boldin (1905) and Marcello Nizzoli (1931), with others by unknown artists.
A very well-known and one of the most popular posters, created by Plinio Codognato in a perfect futurist style, portrays an athletic man holding the name “Marsala Florio”, written in diagonal lettering that is also an integral part of the image.
The fascinating “Marsala Florio” depicting a large bottle with a glass in the foreground framed by large, theatrical curtains opening on to the world is of unknown origin.
Between 1889 and 1899, an extraordinary poster for the ferruginous, quinine-flavoured Marsala by Prof. J. Pitis was created by Metlicoviz, whose artistic canons of the Liberty movement portrayed an elegant, supple, female figure, curved lines and metaphorical aspects, all blended with typical elements of the “ancien regime” lithographs.
Marsala’s middle-upper class, which developed amidst an entrepreneurial spirit and agricultural innovations that had transformed the island’s wine growing, looked on with admiration and a penchant for the unique, sophisticated, elegant models that the Florio family and the English community had raised to become the town’s life style.
Various “minor” businesses which, in the early twentieth century, took their first steps in the “new art” with some very beautiful, interesting posters. Grignani-Tumberello produced a splendid poster dating back to 1903 of unknown author that was a forerunner of the grand ball in the hall of mirrors in The Leopard (Il Gattopardo).
Carlo Alberto Anselmi, a factory known today as the home of the archaeology museum, requested a series of floral posters.
Cavaliere Francesco Grignano’s company preferred a very pragmatic poster with photos of the factories, the awards won in the various oenological events, all with a life-size bottle of S.O.M. in the centre of the picture.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the company Florio Martinez already used the great designers of the time, such as Adolfo Hohenstein, who in 1898 created a liberty style poster that was one of the most beautiful examples of Art Nouveau.
The famous poster for John Hopps & Sons designed by Marco Bazzi dated 1923, in which a sprite releases a group of flags from the bottle to indicate an international product, was followed by an affiche of 1925, in which a charioteer raises a bottle of Marsala as he steers four galloping horses over the top of the globe.
Leonetto Cappiello with his philosophy: “The graphic solution must make it impossible to dissociate the idea from the form” would become the way to advertise of entire generations of artists. He created the famous poster with a zebra “le Meilleur Aperitif” (1930) for Florio Cinzano.
Advertising did not stop at dipping into any form of creativity: from late liberty to arabesque, the drawn tale and the metaphor, Art Deco, Futurism. Codognato’s figurative painting, Mauzan’s eighteenth century. In the nineteen-fifties, sixties and seventies, Marsala advertising followed the taste of the period and retained the excellence of the graphic designs of the time which, according to the experts, represented the golden era of advertising graphics in Italy. By 1954, Marsala arrived on televisions’ evening advertising programme, Carosello.