Leonetto Cappiello

Leonetto Cappiello (9 April 1875 – 2 February 1942) was an Italian and French poster art designer and painter, who mainly lived and worked in Paris.^[1] 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 a 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.^[2]