Leonetto Cappiello

Biography

Leonetto Cappiello was born in Livorno in 1875.  He had a natural talent for drawing and painting and studied art from a young age. He also liked to take sketches of anyone who caught his attention, generally relatives and locals from the town and found that these quick caricatures would give him an income.

With the encouragement of his brother, Cappiello moved to Paris. Having heard Puccini was in town for the French premiere of La Boheme, he managed to persuade him to sit for a caricature. Cappiello also tried his luck with actor Ermete Novelli, to which he obliged and the sketches were very well received. He promptly sold the sketches to Le Rire and from there he became the favoured caricaturist of the theatre and cabaret stars in Paris. This quickly followed with his work being submitted to various other French satirical periodicals to include: Le Galouis, Le Theatre, Le Figaro to name but a few.

Whilst continuing his work with La Rire, a competing editor Alexandre Natanson saw an opportunity and commissioned Cappiello to publish a portfolio of drawings under the title ‘Nos Actrices’ (Our Actresses) which was hastily published in 1899 and was a resounding success. From here Cappiello was to become the master advertiser, now often referred to as ‘the father of modern advertising’. His ‘less is more approach’ of using very bold colours and anonymous characters for a lot of his work gave him the ability to sell a product where his images were immediately recognizable by his audience, and his skill in graphic design allowed him to manipulate them into believing the subconscious image association.

Cappiello produced over a thousand posters and his work is still sought after today and can be found in many museums and galleries around the world.

Download PDF