Artist of the day

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Artist of the Day, June 23, 2026 : Leonetto Cappiello, an Italian poster, graphic artist and painter (#2560)

Leonetto Cappiello (1875 – 1942) was an Italian and French poster art designer and painter, who mainly lived and worked in Paris. 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, Alfred Choubrac and Hugo D'Alesi. Cappiello, like other young artists, worked in a 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. Some of his paintings are on display in the Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori in Livorno.

Cappiello started his career as a caricaturist illustrating in journals like Le Rire, 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 1902, a 24-page book of his caricatures was published entitled 'people of high society' for the magazine L'Assiette au Beurre. The following year, a 38-page book entitled 'The theatre of Cappiello' was published for a special issue of Le Théâtre magazine, with captions written by theatre critics. In 1904, his work was reviewed along with that of Sem and Carlo de Fornaro.

Cappiello began to move away from caricature work favouring posters. In 1905 a final publication '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’s career as a poster artist began in earnest in 1900 when he began a contract with the printer 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 vibrancy 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.

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, Cappiello continued as a caricaturist.

After the First World War Cappiello returned to producing posters. His first meeting with Devambez in 1918 marked the start of a long discussion: three years later he signed an exclusive contract with the Paris publisher for whom he designed now famous icons: such as Kub, Campari, Parapluie Revel, Pirelli, Chocolat Klaus and Poudre de Luzy, and the famous entertainer Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris. 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.

Over the course of his career Cappiello produced more than 530 advertising posters. Today, his original posters are still collected, sold at auction and by dealers around the world.

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Leonetto Cappiello or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Leonetto Cappiello

Folies Bergère, advertisement poster,1900

Advertisement poster, 1901

Beverage advertisement poster, 1901

Tourism and exposition poster, 1901

cosmetics advertisement poster, 1902

Perfume advertisement poster, 1904

Automotive product advertisement poster, 1906

Breath freshener advertisement poster, 1906

Beverage advertisement poster, 1906

Underclothes advertisement poster 1906

Cognac advertisement poster, 1907

Italian department store chain advertisement poster, 1908

Cough and rheumatism remedy advertisement poster, 1909

Rheumatism, gout and arthritis remedy advertisement poster, 1910

Italian vermouth advertisement poster, 1910

Tobacco advertisement poster, 1912

Brand of seaweed soup advertisement poster, 1920

Coffee advertisement poster, 1921

Advertisement poster, 1921

Beverage advertisement poster, 1921

Pasta advertisement poster, 1921

Luxury umbrella manufacturer advertisement poster, 1922

Beverage advertisement poster, 1922

Confectionery advertisement poster, 1923

Beverage advertisement poster, 1925

Consumer advertising poster, 1926

Beverage advertisement poster, 1927

Industrial advertisement poster, 1929

Beverage advertisement poster, 1930

Monday, June 22, 2026

Artist of the Day, June 22, 2026 : David Bomberg, a British painter (#1559)

David Garshen Bomberg (1890 – 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.

Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson, and Dora Carrington. Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.

Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain, Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.

From 1945 to 1953, Bomberg worked as a teacher at Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University) in London, where his pupils included Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Philip Holmes, Cliff Holden, Edna Mann, Dorothy Mead, Gustav Metzger, Dennis Creffield, Cecil Bailey, and Miles Richmond. David Bomberg House, one of the student halls of residences at London South Bank University, is named in his honox0r. He was married to landscape painter Lilian Holt.

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by David Garshen Bomberg or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only