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, the painter the world envies us
The posters made for horror films and 1980s genre cinema are today revered by collectors and enthusiasts from Los Angeles to Tokyo, reprinted, tattooed, quoted: few artists have defined the aesthetic of a decade with such force.
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Luciano Crovato, the poster painter who crossed the screen
Crovato is also the only Italian poster artist to have lived cinema from both sides of the poster: first as the painter of theatrical releases, then as an actor, and finally as a film director.
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Marcello Colizzi - Irony, elegance and a sense of the scene
He was one of the most brilliant painters of Italian cinema, the author of roughly three hundred posters for both Italian and international films. Following in his father's artistic footsteps, he brought a rare quality to the film poster: irony.
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Rodolfo Gasparri: Original compositions and incisive synthesis
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: Light lines and suspended atmospheres
Agatino Avelli, master of watercolour and lightness: evanescent film posters, cool tones and auteur collage that shaped Italian cinema.
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Alessandro Biffignandi: Mastery of chiaroscuro and compositional rigour
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 Figuration and Modernity
Rome, 1933 – Rome, 2023
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Giuliano Nistri: Chiaroscuro and Drama in the Painted Film Poster
Rome, 1929 – 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: Mediterranean Light and Vibrant Colour
San Lucido, 13 July 1927 – Frascati, 11 December 2012
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Arnaldo Putzu: Irony, Graphics and Pictorial Elegance
Rome, 1927 – Rome, 2012
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Otello Mauro Innocenti "Maro": The Narrative Power of Colour
La Spezia, 1927 – Rome, 2003
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Francesco Fiorenzi: The Power of Photography and Collage
Carqueiranne, 1923 – Rome, 1992
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Enzo Nistri: Elegance and Drama in the Film Poster
Rome, 1923 – Rome, 2008
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Rinaldo and Giuliano Gèleng: Graphics, Surrealism and Visual Poetry
Rinaldo: Rome, 1920 – Rome, 2003 / Giuliano: Rome, 1949 – Rome, 2020
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Ercole Brini: the Light Storytelling of Watercolour
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 "Nano" Campeggi: the Language of Colour and Music through the Irony of Form
Florence, 1923 – Florence, 2018There is a detail that says more than a thousand words about the relationship between America and Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War: a twenty-year-old Tuscan 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, signed by a Florentine who never stopped being Florentine.
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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: From Painted Storytelling to Graphic Synthesis
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: Abstraction, Graphic Art and Expressionism on the Walls of Italian Cinema
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 Wit of a Master
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: Irony, Modernity and a Century of Movie Poster Art
Some artists leave their mark across an entire era, decade after decade. Enrico De Seta was one of them.
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Alfredo Capitani: the Master of the Italian Film Poster
Some artists paint for the world. Others paint for themselves. Alfredo Capitani did both: for decades he created legendary movie posters for Hollywood, 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: the Master of the Italian Film 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 cinema graphic art.
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Anselmo Ballester: the painter who gave a face to Italian cinema
Rome, 1897–1974. Half a century of posters that made the history of the seventh art.
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Dracula the Vampire (1958): The Hammer Masterpiece Returns in 4K with Censored Scenes
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: life and works of a genius of movie posters
Averardo Ciriello (Milan, May 28, 1918 – Rome, November 5, 2016) was one of the greatest poster painters in the history of cinema. Over a career spanning nearly seventy years, he created around three thousand sketches for both the Italian and international markets. Today, on his birthday, it 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 from the past that already foresaw 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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Marilyn Monroe: 100 Years Ago a Legend Was Born
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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Rome at 6 Frames per Second
How the Eternal City became the world's most beloved film set — and why its vintage posters are still the most beautiful way to keep it at home
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Boccaccesco Cinema and the Decameron of the 1970s
A journey through the bodies, the pranks and the lost innocence of the Decameron-style cinema of the 1970s: when the flesh became the screen before the advent of consumerist degradation.
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Billy Wilder: cinema's romantic cynic
From European exile to the legend of Hollywood: a journey through the cinema of a masterful director who has managed to combine cynicism, irony and profound human truth in unforgettable noir films and timeless comedies.
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Cinema and Furnishings
Film posters, vintage posters and film-inspired designs transform homes, hotels and modern spaces into environments full of style and personality.
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Western-style spaghetti
The Western myth reinvented by Italian cinema
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Noir: the dark side of cinema
A journey through shadows, 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 1970s, with visionary directors, bolder stories and films destined to become legendary.
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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 the silver 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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The Peplum: when the legend came back to life on screen.
A journey through Italian Peplum cinema, exploring myth, heroic figures and imagination, at a time when cinema was reinventing antiquity.
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Movie world: when cinema set out to tell the story of the world (and ended up chasing it).
From documentary to provocation: the rise of mondo movies in 1960s Italian cinema
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Censorship and film posters: when posters were ‘censored’
There was a time, not so long ago, when even a cinema poster could disturb the peace.
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Erotic posters and 'red-light' playbills: desire painted on the walls.
Even before entering the auditorium, the viewer was touched, provoked, almost called by name by those immense images that heralded promises greater than the film itself.
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Italian Neorealism
When cinema portrayed real life.
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The Rediscovered Poster
A major project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna
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Vintage Posters: Painted Film Posters 1930–1980
Brushes, colors, and talent: this is how the poster painters of the 20th century transformed cinema into iconic images. From Fellini’s masterpieces to the noir films of the 1960s, painted posters told an entire story at a single glance.
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Exhibition in Bologna: The Great Posters of Auteur Cinema
In Bologna, the restored posters by SacWebphoto are on display: twelve masterpieces of Italian cinema printed on canvas between history and visual art.
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