Leonetto Cappiello (9 April 1875 – 2 February 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.
Biography
He was born in Livorno in Tuscany. He would die in Cannes in France.
Cappiello had no formal training in art.
Caricatures
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.
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. His first poster, for the newspaper Frou-Frou, was made in 1899.