Leonetto Cappiello

Who was Leonetto Cappiello?

Leonetto Cappiello was an Italian poster art designer who lived 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 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.