MARCELLO DUDOVICH

Who is Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962), to put it in a nutshell to those who do not know him at all: the greatest Italian poster designer of the last century. And what a "poster designer" is, because he is now used to large wall posters almost exclusively photographic, it is easy to say: he who conceived and designed advertising and propaganda posters, roughly from the late nineteenth century to the end of the fifties of the twentieth century. In fact, at that time, those functions that are now separate, such as copywriter, art director and production artist, were brought together in the same person, who, precisely, had to get ideas and then think about how to put them down in captivating images. Sometimes a good idea was not enough because its transposition into an image was not effective, or, conversely, artists with a great hand did not have good ideas to propose. The promotion of a product had well-defined rules: an original idea, a concise and effective design and finally a decisive colorism. The philosophy of a sector magazine of the 1920s entitled "Il Fugno nell'occhio" was based on this triad. because they were a catwalk of the best posters of the time which, due to their originality or their chromatism, "caught" the attention of passers-by. In this contentment, Dudovich was the most requested poster designer, due to the superior quality of his creations, and also the longest-lived, demonstrating that he also knew how to renew himself, avoiding stylistic fossilization, which instead decreed the early decline of other artists, too linked to a very specific stylistic code.Once in Milan, from his native Trieste, in 1897, he was welcomed by fellow citizen Leopoldo Metlicovits in the staff of the Ricordi graphic workshops .He had experiences in Bologna, where he won many competitions for the posters of the spring and May festivals Bolognese. He collaborated for a long time with the magazine "Simplicissimus". He loved living in the living rooms and receptions among those beautiful women whom he then portrayed on his posters according to that art nouveau line, often in flat colors, with bright colors and large floral flourishes. He collaborated with apple, campari, witch, borsalino, and various magazines until at the end of the war he started a long collaboration with La Rinascente, for which he created hundreds of manfiesti for seasonal promotions that portray the evolution of the woman's look during the 1930s. Finally, after the Second World War he built manfiesti for the loan of the reconstruction, for the pitch and for the renaissance that will give him confidence until a few years before his death.

17.02.2021