Before television, before digital advertising — there was the poster. For roughly 80 years, from the 1880s to the 1960s, the advertising poster was the dominant medium of commercial visual culture. And in that golden era, some of the most enduring images ever created were made not for galleries, but for café walls, kiosks, and railway stations.
The Birth of the Modern Advertising Poster
The modern advertising poster as we know it was essentially invented in Paris in the 1870s. The key figure was Jules Chéret, a lithographer who pioneered the use of bold colour, dynamic figures, and joyful theatricality in commercial art. His posters for theatres, cabarets, and consumer products established the visual language that would define the form for decades.
Chéret's genius was making advertising feel like celebration. His posters didn't sell products so much as they sold a feeling — of Parisian pleasure, lightness, modern life. By the 1890s, artists of genuine stature — Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Théophile Steinlen — were producing posters as serious works of art. The line between commercial art and fine art had never been thinner.
Campari: The Brand That Made Art Its Identity
Of all the brands that commissioned great poster art, Campari stands apart. The Italian aperitif began commissioning posters in the early 20th century and never stopped. The results were extraordinary: bold graphic abstraction, Art Nouveau elegance, and Futurist energy, all in service of a single bitter red drink.
Fortunato Depero's 1928 commission — realised in his signature Futurist style — is one of the most recognised pieces of 20th century graphic design. The Campari Viola by Fortunato Depero shows his extraordinary capacity for turning commercial work into pure art: fragmented, kinetic, unmistakably modern. Leonetto Cappiello, the so-called father of modern advertising, produced multiple Campari posters of extraordinary vitality — including the iconic Bitter Campari poster that became one of the defining images of 20th century graphic advertising. Later, Bernard Villemot contributed a series of clean, modernist images exemplified by the enduring Campari L'Aperitivo poster.
Collecting Campari posters has become a serious pursuit. High-quality reproduction prints bring the same visual power into any home — and they pair naturally with the bottles of Italian aperitivo that have never been more popular. The Davide Campari Clowns poster and the bold Campari colourful bottles design show the extraordinary visual range the brand commanded across the decades.
Champagne and the Rhetoric of Luxury
Champagne houses understood the power of association early. From the late 19th century, brands like Moët & Chandon, Pommery, and Joseph Perrier commissioned posters that linked their products to elegance, festivity, and a particular idea of the good life.
The visual language of champagne advertising drew on Belle Époque sensibility — beautiful women, sumptuous settings, the shimmer of celebration. The Champagne Pommery & Greno poster from the 1890s and the Joseph Perrier vintage poster carry that same quality of transported glamour. They read as both history and decoration simultaneously.
Leonetto Cappiello and the Grammar of Impact
If one figure defines the transition from decorative Art Nouveau to sharp, modern graphic advertising, it is Leonetto Cappiello. Born in Livorno in 1875, he moved to Paris at 20 and by the early 1900s was the most in-demand poster artist in Europe.
Cappiello's breakthrough insight was simple: a poster must be readable at speed, from a moving vehicle or a crowded street. He abandoned the elaborate detail of Mucha and Chéret in favour of stark, bold figures against dark or plain backgrounds. The image had to register instantly and stick in memory.
His work for Bitter Campari, mineral water brands, and dozens of other clients shows a consistent genius for reduction — taking a complex product and finding the one image that would lodge itself permanently in the viewer's mind. His posters remain among the most collected of the 20th century.
Italian Aperitifs: A Visual Culture
Beyond Campari, the broader world of Italian aperitivo culture generated an extraordinary body of graphic art. Cinzano, Martini Rossi, Vermouth Bianco, Carpano — each brand developed a visual identity across decades of poster commissions. The Florio Cinzano vintage poster and the Vermouth Martini Rossi Torino poster represent this tradition at its finest — images that carry genuine historical weight while looking entirely at home in a contemporary kitchen or bar.
A set of Italian aperitif posters — a Campari, a Cinzano, a Martini — makes one of the most effective kitchen or bar wall arrangements imaginable. Browse our full bar and aperitivo wall art collection to find the combination that works for your space.
Styling Vintage Advertising Posters at Home
The great advantage of vintage advertising posters as wall art is their versatility. They work in almost every context: kitchen, living room, home bar, hallway, study. A few principles help get the most from them:
Frame consistently. A set of posters unified by the same frame — solid oak, thin black, or simple natural timber — reads as a deliberate collection rather than an afterthought. If the posters themselves are diverse in style, the consistent frame creates visual coherence.
Consider the wall colour. Most vintage advertising posters were designed to be read against neutral or dark backgrounds. They pop on white walls, but can be equally effective against deep greens, navy, or terracotta — colours that echo the palette of European café culture.
Mix with intention. A single large poster as a focal point works well. A curated grouping of three or five related images works even better. The key is intention: a deliberate selection of connected images reads as curation; a random accumulation reads as clutter.
The great advertising posters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were made to command attention. In a domestic setting, they do exactly that — bringing the energy, colour, and graphic confidence of another era into contemporary spaces that are often too cautious, too minimal, too safe.
