Sixteen vermouth, you immediately think of advertising posters which have made this product famous in Italy and throughout the world. Prints produced from the 1910s to the 1960s, still marketed today and the result of a collaboration between the biggest brands of the time and famous Italian, French and German artists. If vermouth can boast a certain notoriety today, the credit is undoubtedly also due to these posters, in a word iconic.
Marketing at the time and the birth of posters
It was January 3, 1954 when television began to broadcast RAI programs throughout Italy. Up until that time, and to tell the truth until 1957, advertising had traveled exclusively via radio – since 1928 – and through the printed press. In this way, companies could get people talking about themselves and the products they were launching on the market. There were no alternatives and, as we know, situations of scarcity stimulate creativity. Thus, vermouth, the aromatized wine from Turin invented over a century earlier – in 1786, by Antonio Benedetto Carpano – was advertised mainly through printed media, but not with simple advertisements. Cinzano, Campari, Martini and Carpano. These are the four companies that have stood out most in the advertising of vermouth in the last century. Their posters were created by artists who at the time could boast considerable celebrity. The first were Leonetto Cappiello, Adolfo Hohenstein and Marcello Dudovich, the fathers of modern Italian advertising posters, together with Giovanni Maria Mataloni and Leopoldo Metlicovitz, followed by Achille Luciano Mauzan, Fortunato Depero and Armando Testa.
Poster Artists: From the 1910s to the 1930s
Caricaturist for prestigious French magazines such as Le Figaro, Hat he was appreciated for his very personal style, with which he described in an iconic way the reality he saw through his own eyes. In his posters, the one made for Campari in 1921 is famous, the link between product and testimonial is very close. An exponent of the Art Nouveau style, set designer at the La Scala theatre, illustrator and costume designer, Hohenstein was appreciated and remembered for the work he carried out at the Officine Grafiche Ricordi, famous printing house in Milan where it is colleague of Mataloni and has as students Metlicovitz and Dudovich. Here he sets out some Campari posters, distinguishable by the warm colors and reflective images. Triestino born to a Dalmatian family, Dudovich is one of the most recognized artists among the five. His graphic works in Milan and Bologna did not go unnoticed, especially with regard to the white lady, an advertising figure constructed to broaden the market target to women, thanks to white vermouth.
Poster Artists: From the 30s to the 60s
Achille Luciano Mauzan is the only French artist on this special list. First an illustrator for magazines, postcards and ceramics and then for about 1500 films, He is still remembered today for the 1930 print he made for Carpano, which reads “Vermuth Carpano Unico de Torino”. Lucky Depero is the artist who brought advertising art into a new era, that of geometric posters.. Signatory of the aeropittura manifesto and symbol of the second futurism, he managed to exalt alcoholic products, with and without the 'emotional' help of colors. The last important exponent of advertising graphics linked to vermouth is Armando Testa. He deserves credit for having exported the product outside of Turin, and in a certain sense too, the concept of Punt e Mes, which not only represents the vermouth produced by Carpano, but also the taste of this aromatized wine: one point of bitter and half of sweet.
Our hope is that this list will continue to grow during and after the Vermouth Show. Perhaps, with the signature of authors who have already been able to have their say in the world of wine. See the artist Gianluca Cannizzo, aka My Poster Sucks, who has already signed the Del Mago Drinks collection by the Turin chef and owner of the 1 Michelin Star restaurant Magorabin Marcello Trentini.
