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

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.

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