TRIESTE - From a photograph to a successful advertising poster.
There was a careful work of shots behind the large billboards that made Marcello Dudovich one of the giants of advertising so much in vogue on the walls of big cities between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the new century.
The Trieste artist was hunting for ideas, aiming at high society that frequented the racetracks in Italy and abroad, looking at life in the fields and, above all, focusing attention on women, actresses of cinema and of the theater such as Maria Melato, operetta and opera stars such as Gea della Garisenda, well known for '' Tripoli bel suol d 'amore' ', but also drawing ideas from impromptu occasions that involved family and friends.
His works are the unmistakable sign of how the golden years of the new consumer persuasion tool were also the mirror of the tastes and fashions of an era.
After having held the bench in recent months in Switzerland at the Museum of Chiasso, the exhibition `` Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962) photography between art and passion '', curated by Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini and Roberto Curci, now tells in Trieste from 10 July until January 10, 2021 this unprecedented aspect of one of the masters of modern signage.
In the former stables of the Miramare Castle, among the more than 300 works there are 200 unpublished vintage photographs, 32 original posters, 25 sketches and sketches, magazines, letters, postcards and documents.
The material, granted by public and private lenders, offers the possibility to compare the passage from the photo to the sketch, to the development in tempera before the scale execution of the poster and, finally, its color printing.
'' In front of his posters one cannot remain indifferent because they are capable of bringing the image into us - explains Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini, director of the Chiasso museum -.
We no longer find the canonical composition of the models but we see women caught almost in a fleeting moment, smiling at us or having an almost disheveled pose, from the back or three-quarters, with their clothes in the wind fluttering, or in the act of adjusting their clothes.
Dudovich was very much liked by large clients, such as the clothing stores of the Fratelli Mele in Naples, and by the new managers of the Rinascente in the 1920s because his communication skills were such as to be able to involve those who looked ''.
After making his bones in the artistic environment of his city, the young designer moved to Milan in 1897, thanks to the fact that his father was a friend of Leopoldo Metlicovitz, also from Trieste, already a famous painter and poster designer for some time.
As a lithographer in the Ricordi workshops, Dudovich got to know the most prestigious signatures of advertising posters up close.
Two years later he moved to Bologna where he began to sign his works and collect his first successes, including in 1900 the gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris.
'' In this exhibition - explains Roberto Curci - we discover the hitherto unknown dimension of the photographer Dudovich, who decided not only to be portrayed, young and provocative, in extravagant and eccentric poses, but to make photography a reminder that would come in handy for certain works, posters, advertising boards, illustrations for magazines.
It was surprising to discover how much certain works that were known actually had this propaedeutic dimension, the photos that led to that result ''.
After the early shots, the room dedicated to the Belle Époque (1910-1914) describes the period in which the artist, recently hired by the satirical magazine "Simplicissimus" of Munich as a "worldly chronicler", realizes how photography can give him inspiration for the illustrations for the Bavarian newspaper and, later, for advertising posters.
But it was in the interwar period, from 1920 to 1935, that Dudovich's career reached its peak.
Having become manager and artistic director of the Star-IGAP company, he took care of the creation, distribution and posting of wall posters throughout Italy.
There is also space to observe the bond with Leopoldo Metlicovitz precisely through the passion for photography that united the two artists.
Dudovich's images appear more immediate and casual than Metlicovitz's twenty photographs, preserved at the Civic Photographic Archive of Milan and now exhibited to the public for the first time.
(HANDLE).