Blog

Paolo Sestito, from brush to computer

From Rodolfo Gasparri's studio to the Ciak d'Oro for The Ignorant Fairies: the story of a painter who moved into graphic design and experienced the transformation of the Italian movie poster, from the age of the paintbrush to the digital era.

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Mario Ferrari "Mafè", Italian movie poster artist behind An American in Rome and The Uncanny

Active from at least the late 1960s through the end of the 1970s

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Niso Ramponi "Kremos", Italian Movie Poster Artist Behind Miracolo a Viggiù and I'm All Right Jack

Rome, 6 January 1924 – Bozzolo, 14 March 2002

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Renato Casaro, the last great master of italian film poster art

From Treviso to Hollywood: the last brush of a golden age of cinema

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Donelli, Italian Movie Poster Artist for Cortile and Vivre sa vie

Active from the mid-Fifties to the early Sixties

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Cinema and Interior Design: Italian Film Poster Art for Distinctive Spaces

Original film posters, authentic painted works of art created in twentieth-century Italy and now brought into contemporary design through a unique archive, professional photography of original prints and meticulous digital restoration, for residential, hospitality, commercial and cultural spaces.

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Arnaldo Aldo De Amicis, Italian Movie Poster Artist for Forbidden Games and This Island Earth

Rome, 1 March 1904 – Rome, 30 April 1978

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Giovanni Alessandri “Aller”, from movie posters to calendars

From the print shops of Rome to Studio Paradiso, from Giuliano Gemma to James Bond: the story of a signature everyone has seen without ever knowing it

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The Western, a brief history of a cinema legend

From John Ford's frontier to Sergio Leone's dollars: a century of Western movies

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Italian Horror: the story of the genre that taught cinema how to fear

From Mario Bava's gothic to Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci: the cinema of fear between Italy and the world

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Renato Fratini, Striking Balances of Intense Color and Painterly Harmony

Some cinema painters can be recognized by a single detail, others by a chord of colors. Renato Fratini belongs to the second family: his intense hues, boldly juxtaposed yet always harmonious, stand out at a glance on any wall. Born in Rome in 1932, he lived a short but intense life, driven by a talent that ranged freely from figurative language to the suggestions of abstract art. In little more than twenty years of activity he left a deep mark on two schools at once, the Italian film poster tradition and British advertising illustration, a double achievement no other cartellonista of his generation can claim.

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Massimo Petrollo "Maxy", the painter of the last shift

Every story needs someone who stays until closing time, and in the story of the Italian painted film poster that someone often signed "Maxy".

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Ezio Tarantelli, the first E of Studio E2

Ezio Tarantelli’s story is closely intertwined with Enzo Sciotti’s: after working together in the same Roman studio, they founded Studio E2, named after the initials of Ezio and Enzo.

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Pierpaolo Scalera, The Movie Poster in the Age of Photography

Pierpaolo Scalera is one of the great image-makers of the photographic era: he does not paint the stars, he composes them, cuts them out, ignites them on grounds of pure colour, and governs typography the way the old masters governed the brushstroke.

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Rodolfo Valcarenghi, movie poster artist at Studio Favalli

In the Rome of cinema there was an address every painter knew: Studio Favalli, the workshop founded by Augusto Favalli, one of the most important ateliers of Italian film-poster art, the one through which, between auditions and apprenticeships, passed many of the names that would make the history of the painted poster. Within that legendary workshop, the signature that recurs most often beside the house mark is an elegant cursive: Valcarenghi. For years Rodolfo Valcarenghi was Studio Favalli's leading painter, the man of the great campaigns for Lux and for the American majors and at the same time one of the most refined stylists of the Italian film poster: few like him knew how to bring to the walls the elegance of fashion illustration and the modernity of international graphic design.

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Mario Piovano, the painter of the Paradiso workshop

Mario Piovano was the painterly face of this reality, covering one of the longest and most varied arcs of the Italian film poster, from Totò's comedies to Japanese robots.

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Adelchi Serafini, the painter of a thousand registers

In the landscape of film poster painters, Adelchi Serafini embodies versatility as an art form.

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Bruno Napoli, the painter of wonder

Napoli was the painter of wonder, the man to whom Italy entrusted the films that were meant to make eyes open wide.

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Giovanni Di Stefano, the painter of movement

Di Stefano is a painter of gesture and this quality, matured over years of illustrated covers for Italy's great popular weeklies, made him one of the most effective hands in adventure and genre posters between the Sixties and Seventies.

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Franco Picchioni, the painter who came from the newsstands

Before reaching the walls of Italian cities, Franco Picchioni's painting passed through Italian hands every week: on the covers of pocket thrillers, on comic books, even on postcards of pop singers.

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Bob De Seta, the painter who crossed two eras of the film poster

In the history of Italian painted cinema there are artists who lived through a single season and artists who crossed two. Roberto De Seta, who signs his works with the unmistakable "Bob De Seta", belongs to the second kind.

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Enzo Sciotti, Italy's poster master admired around the world

The posters made for horror films and 1980s genre cinema.

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Luciano Crovato, the Italian movie poster artist who crossed over to the screen

Crovato is also an apparently unique case among Italian poster artists to have lived cinema from both sides of the poster: first as an artist creating posters for theatrical releases, then as an actor, and finally as a film director.

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Marcello Colizzi, the italian movie poster artist of wit and elegance

He was one of the most brilliant artists of Italian cinema, creating around three hundred posters for both Italian and international films. Born into an artistic family, he brought a rare quality to movie poster art: wit.

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Rodolfo Gasparri, a Painter of Originality and Simplicity

His strength is synthesis: he can isolate a face, a gaze, a gesture and charge it with all the tension of the film. Even when he starts from the sketch and from watercolour, his painting aims at bold contrast, dramatic light and essential construction, always recognisable for its balance between graphic invention and painterly vigour.

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Agatino Avelli, Master of Watercolour and Grace

Agatino Avelli, delicate lines and suspended atmospheres: evanescent posters, cool tones, and signature collages that left their mark on Italian cinema

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Alessandro Biffignandi, Master of Chiaroscuro

Alessandro Biffignandi, master of monochromatic chiaroscuro: film posters, portraits and crowd scenes that shaped the art of Italian cinema graphics.

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Piero Ermanno Iaia, Between Figurative Art and Modernity

Rome, 1933 – Rome, 2023

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Giuliano Nistri: the painter of drama in hand-painted posters

Rome, 1926 – Anzio (Rome), 2022

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Sandro Symeoni: From Seductive Figures to Social Dramas

Migliarino (Ferrara), 1928 – Rome, 2007

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Nicola Simbari, Painter and Movie Poster Artist: Mediterranean Light and Colour

San Lucido, 13 July 1927 – Frascati, 11 December 2012

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Arnaldo Putzu, Italian Movie Poster Artist: Wit and Pictorial Elegance

Rome, 1927 – Rome, 2012

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Otello Mauro Innocenti “Maro”: Colour and Storytelling in the Italian Movie Poster

Rome, 1927 – Rome, 2003

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Francesco Fiorenzi, Master of Movie Poster Photomontage

Carqueiranne, 1923 – Rome, 1992

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Enzo Nistri, elegance and drama in the movie poster

Rome, 1923 – Rome, 2008

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Rinaldo and Giuliano Gèleng, Surrealism in the Movie Poster

Rinaldo: Rome, 1920 – Rome, 2003 / Giuliano: Rome, 1949 – Rome, 2020

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Ercole Brini: Master of the Watercolour Movie Poster

Watercolour is too fragile, too delicate for a film poster. Ercole Brini used it anyway and, precisely for that reason, became one of the most original voices in Italian cinema poster art.

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Silvano Campeggi "Nano": The Hollywood Movie Post Artist

Florence, 1923 – Florence, 2018There is a detail that says more than a thousand words about the relationship between America and Italy in the closing years of the Second World War: a young Tuscan artist in his early twenties who, while Europe still lay in ruins, was commissioned by the American Red Cross to paint portraits of soldiers awaiting their discharge. This is how Silvano Campeggi, destined to go down in history by the nickname "Nano", came into contact with the music, cinema and culture of the United States. From that first encounter would grow one of the most extraordinary and least publicly known careers in the history of the film poster: more than three thousand works for Hollywood, created by a Florentine artist who remained deeply rooted in his native city throughout his life.

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Angelo Cesselon, Master of the Portrait and the Spell of Colour

In the postwar years, before they ever saw a film, Italians met its face on the walls of their cities. And often that face, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Ingrid Bergman, had been painted by Angelo Cesselon, built up with a thousand touches of colour and a few strokes of the palette knife. More than illustrating a plot, Cesselon captured a gaze, and into that gaze he put the entire film.

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Carlantonio Longi, the versatile painter

In the corner of hundreds of posters, beneath Harold Lloyd's outstretched arm as he dangles from a clock, beside Paul Newman's face, at the feet of Bergman's hooded Death, the same signature always appears: "Longi." A single hand behind a vast body of work, able to move from American slapstick to European art-house cinema without ever losing its recognizability. Behind that signature is Carlantonio Longi, one of the painters who gave the big screen a painted face.

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Manfredo Acerbo: the painter between abstraction and expressionism

There are painters you recognise at a glance, even when they change style, even when they experiment, even when they seem to want to wrong-foot the viewer. Manfredo Acerbo was one of them.

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Dante Manno: Powerful Figures between Classical Painting and Modern Graphic Art

A Rome born painter with academic training, Dante Manno created some of the most powerful vintage Italian movie posters of the postwar era. A master who worked in the shadows, finally told

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Giorgio Olivetti, the elegant irony of a Bolognese painter

There is a category of artists that official art history has systematically overlooked, not because their talent was inferior to that of colleagues hanging in museums, but because their medium was billboard paper destined for city walls.

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Renato Ferrini: Colour as Language, Line as Emotion

Renato Ferrini was one of the most original and least celebrated figures in Italian film poster design. In a landscape dominated by pictorial realism, he chose the opposite path: graphic synthesis, visual symbolism, colour as an emotional language. A forerunner, yet to be fully discovered.

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Enrico De Seta, the centenarian painter between irony and modernity

There are artists who span an entire era, leaving a mark in every decade they pass through.

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Alfredo Capitani, the film poster artist who painted for himself

Some artists paint for the world. Others paint for themselves. Alfredo Capitani did both: for decades he created legendary Italian movie posters for major Hollywood films, then chose silence. No exhibitions, no sales. Just canvases kept privately until the end. But his posters, from Gilda to Moby Dick, still speak for him.

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Luigi Martinati, Master of the Italian Movie Poster

Luigi Martinati is widely regarded as one of the greatest Italian film poster artists of the twentieth century. Over a career spanning more than fifty years he created iconic posters for Warner Bros., Columbia and the leading international distributors, leaving a permanent mark on the history of Italian film poster art.

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Anselmo Ballester, master of the Italian movie poster

Rome, 1897–1974. Half a century of posters that helped shape the history of cinema.

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Marilyn Monroe at 100: A Hollywood Legend

On June 1, 1926, Norma Jeane Mortenson was born. We celebrate her centenary with three original Italian hand-painted movie posters: The Asphalt Jungle, The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop.

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Dracula (1958): The Hammer Masterpiece Returns in 4K with Restored Censored Footage

There is something profoundly cinematic about what is about to happen. Almost seventy years after its release in British cinemas, those cinemas where, according to contemporary accounts, some audience members fainted during the screening, Dracula the Vampire (1958) is preparing to return. Restored in 4K. Uncut. With everything the censors had torn away. This is cinema being reborn. And art history coming back to breathe.

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Averardo Ciriello: Master of Italian Movie Posters

Today, on his birthday, is the right moment to tell the story of his life, his works and a talent that remained in the shadows for far too long.

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Prophetic Cinema: 10 Films That Already Saw the Future

The ten titles that follow don't just tell stories: they pose questions about technology, media power and human nature that still remain unanswered today. If you haven't seen them, now is the time. If you've already seen them, perhaps it's time to watch them again with fresh eyes.

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Rome on Screen: Six Films That Made the Eternal City a Star

How Rome became the world's most beloved film set, and why its vintage posters are still the most beautiful way to keep a piece of it at home.

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Decamerotic Cinema: The Decameron Boom of the 1970s

A journey through the bodies, mischief and lost innocence of 1970s Decamerotic cinema, before Italian erotic comedy moved towards more overtly commercial formulas.

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Billy Wilder: Hollywood's Romantic Cynic

From European exile to Hollywood legend: a journey through the cinema of a master director who fused cynicism, wit, and profound human truth across unforgettable noir and timeless comedy.

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Designing with the Art of Cinema

Restored film posters are becoming an increasingly important resource for interior designers, hospitality projects, and event styling, though good ones are far harder to find than the growing interest in them would suggest.

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The Spaghetti Western

The Western myth reinvented by Italian cinema

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Film Noir: the dark side of cinema

A journey through shadow, desire, and moral ambiguity: film noir as an unstable form of modern cinema, where every image conceals an incomplete truth, and every story reveals the most fragile side of the human being.

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New Hollywood: When American cinema changed forever

A journey through the New Hollywood revolution, the movement that transformed American cinema between the 1960s and the 1970s, with visionary directors, bolder stories, and films destined to become legendary.

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Italian Cinema Actresses and the invention of self

A journey through the great actresses of Italian cinema who, between Neorealism and the 1960s, transformed the face of femininity on screen, redefining beauty, identity, and freedom of expression.

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Nouvelle Vague: the French cinema that changed history

A journey through French Nouvelle Vague, the movement that revolutionised cinematic language in the 1950s and 1960s with creative freedom, realism and visual innovation, leaving a legacy that lives on in cinema and in the art of vintage posters.

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Anna Magnani: the authentic face of Italian cinema

The story of Anna Magnani, an iconic actress of Neorealism, spanning cinema, theatre and an unvarnished truth

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Italian Peplum: When myth came back to life on screen

A journey through Italian Peplum cinema, myth, heroic figures, and imagination, from an era when cinema set out to reinvent antiquity.

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Mondo movie: when cinema set out to tell the story of the world (and ended up chasing it)

From documentary to provocation: the rise of the mondo movie in 1960s Italian cinema.

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Censorship in Italian film posters: When posters were covered up

There was a time, not so long ago, when even a cinema poster could disturb the peace.

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Italian Erotic Movie Posters: Between Art and Cinema

The art of seduction in Italian film posters.

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Italian Neorealism

When cinema portrayed real life.

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The Rediscovered Poster

The Rediscovered Movie Poster: A Project with the Cineteca di Bologna

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Vintage Italian Movie Posters: Art, Cinema and Interior Design

Brushes, colours, and talent: this is how the poster painters of the 20th century transformed cinema into iconic images.

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Exhibition in Bologna: Great Italian Film Posters

Twelve restored Italian film posters printed on canvas at Biblioteca Salaborsa in Bologna: an exhibition where cinema history becomes visual art.

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