LEONETTO CAPPIELLO (1875-1942) LE PETIT DAUPHINOIS. 1933.
46 3/4x63 1/4 inches, 118 3/4x160 3/4 cm. Devambez, Paris.
Condition B+: repaired tears, restored losses and minor overpainting in margins and image and along vertical and horizontal folds; light water stains in bottom margin; light offsetting in right image and text; ink and paper stamp in lower right image.
Cappiello was the most influential and prolific poster artist of the first quarter of the 20th century. He began his career as a caricaturist for Parisian magazines, a style reflected in his earliest posters. By 1903, Cappiello had progressed to bolder design tenets, inventing a new approach to poster design that featured brightly colored animals or characters that stuck in the public's mind so forcibly that they immediately became inseparable from the brand being promoted. With the Art Deco movement sweeping through artistic circles in the mid-1920s, Cappiello added a more stylized approach to his design. He maintained a unique, identifiable style, finding humorous and magnetic graphic solutions for his posters that kept him at the top of the advertising community. By the time he designed this poster for a French newspaper, he was already 58 years old, and yet it is clear that his creativity was as fresh as ever. The concept of a journalist with the "world in his eyes," transcribing what he sees into the pages of the publication, proves to be a mesmerizing design. The poster "testifies to the stylistic evolution of Cappiello: one senses the influence of Cassandre's surrealism in the drawing and color" (Reclame p. 39). Although executed towards the end of his illustrious career, this remains one of Cappiello's rarest posters. We have found only three copies at auction since 1989. Rennert / Cappiello 509, Cappiello, 337, Reclame 13.