Italian poster designer Marcello Dudovich was born the third of four brothers in 1878 in the north
eastern city of Trieste to an Italian mother, who was a professional pianist and a Dalmatian father,
who worked for an insurance company. He travelled to Munich at the age of
17 in 1895 where he took life drawing classes at the city's art academy. Whether this was the full
extent of his art education is far from clear, but as luck would have it his father was a friend
of fellow Dalmatian Leopoldo Metlicovitz, the artistic director at the prestigious Milan based
publishers Ricordi, and he gave the young Dudovich a job as a lithographer in the company's studio.
But it wasn't until 1899 when he relocated to Bologna, where he worked as a designer
and illustrator for the publisher Edmondo Chappuis that he began creating his own
posters. it was also in Bologna that he met Elisa Bucchi, a fashion journalist,
and not long after they were married. It was in that year he created this impressive
rather grandiose poster for an art materials company, and when it won the gold medal at
the following year's Paris World fair it went a long way towards establishing his
reputation as a force to be reckoned with. Much of his early work revealed the influence
of Alphonse Mucha, realised very much in the Italian version of Art Nouveau known
as Stile Liberty. And like Mucha and virtually everyone else he frequently
made creative use of a single posed figure, although unlike Mucha in Dudovich's posters
the male was just as prevalent as the female. But there were also signs of a certain stylistic
restlessness, with some of the posters from this period revealing bolder less
ornate influences too, with occasional forays into limited colours and flatter application.
And although some of his posters were fairly domestic and mundane Many more of his designs
revealed a pronounced inclination towards the romantically fanciful and neoclassical.
But this diversity in his approach led to a body of images possessed of more
visual variety than many of his contemporaries. Having experienced such success in Bologna In 1905
Dudovich returned to Milan and was welcomed back at Ricordi, this time as a successful
illustrator and poster designer in his own right. And over the next few years Dudovich produced
posters for a wide range of clients and events and he became increasingly crucial to the ongoing
unprecedented success of Ricordi. Many of his images were created for what might be considered
to be local clients but quite a few were published across all Italy too, which only served
to enhance his already formidable reputation. In the middle of the decade he began creating
what would become an extensive series of posters for the Naples based department store E & A
Mele. These images of elegant sophisticated female characters were remarkably stylish,
and blended modernist posterisation techniques with more naturalistic shading
with considerable aesthetic success. He used a similar graphic technique
in the production of colour cover illustrations for the magazine Ars et
Labor, which was also published by Ricordi. A year or two later the motor car began to appear
in his advertising work, and naturally enough would feature increasingly in his future output.
He continued to produce other stylish and sometimes melodramatic posters,
but at the turn of the decade he also established a strong working relationship with the German
satirical magazine Simplicissimus, based in Munich. Although the magazine's overall tone
was quite political and comically scathing the illustrations Dudovich created were not really
humorous, but more lighthearted evocations of the wealthy and glamorous at play, frequently
with the implication of romantic and even sexual possibility. His rather privileged position at the
magazine also required him to tour the cultural capitals of Europe supposedly for reference,
and the enviable terms of his employment allowed him to continue working almost as
prolifically as he had previously on poster work. Unlike his traditional lithographic posters these
images were actually reproduced from his painted originals, usually in gouache but sometimes
with the addition of textures and line work in graphite. As early as 1913 his album of images
titled Corso was published as a limited edition of 1000 copies by Simplicissimus and it was highly
sought after by collectors. But this successful relationship had to be suspended in 1914 when war
broke out and Germany and Italy suddenly found themselves on opposing sides of the conflict.
Dudovich returned to Italy, but because of his recent Germanic associations he was not allowed
to fight for his adopted country, and was even forced to report to the police on a weekly basis
throughout the conflict. Unsurprisingly the demand for his essentially frivolous poster
work fell away quite markedly during the war, but he did create a small number of posters and even
some magazine covers to keep occupied throughout. Between 1917 and 1920 he and his wife relocated to
Turin, but he continued to work for Ricordi until 1920, when he parted company with them and formed
his own company Star, which allied itself to the Rome based publishers IGAP. And in recognition
of his immense commercial value in 1922 he was made artistic director of the parent company.
Among other clients he acquired at this time his images were used frequently by the Milan
department store, La Rinascente. And as with his earlier work for Mele the striking and glamorous
images he produced became inextricably linked to this client for several decades to come.
And both he and La Rinascente profited greatly from their association. He also
produced posters promoting the performances of the hugely popular operetta star Nella Regini.
It was also during the early 1920s that he resumed his association with Simplicissimus,
and once more provided what were by now somewhat incongruously glamorous images,
given the miserable conditions for most in postwar Germany. Having said that those at the top of
the food chain still managed to have a high old time, and this was the world Dudovich reflected.
By this point much of the earlier stylistic grandiosity expected of Stile Liberty had
evaporated, and had been replaced with a mix of light humour and female glamour,
firmly rooted in a more plausible contemporary setting. But there were still some flights of
fancy in evidence, even if considerably less so than those from a couple of decades earlier.
Throughout the 1920s the posters he produced spanned a wide range of clients and products,
And his textured diagonal strike approach to the application of colour remained
constant. His predisposition for tonal representation endured throughout, and
at this time he made little if any concession to the increasingly popular use of the more
geometrically inclined futurist and art deco styling now evident in the work of many others.
In this decade Dudovich also had considerable success with a series of designs featuring
dainty young females which formed the basis for a collection of exquisitely
made expensive doll figures crafted by the prestigious company Lenci. They are
now highly sought after by collectors and fetch very high prices at auction.
In terms of his working methods Dudovich generally either drew directly from life
models or more frequently took photographs of the figures to be featured in any given poster,
and following conversion to a sketch, and a roughly painted gouache maquette for client
approval or amendment the final image was then created lithographically for publication.
His level of productivity and the diversity and creative persistence of the posters he
produced during the 1920s was nothing short of incredible, and despite the fact that Italy,
like other European countries was positively bursting at the seams with spectacularly
talented poster artists he continued to hold a position of popularity and respect few of his
contemporary countrymen could equal at this time. And as the 20s turned to the 30s there was no
letting up of this outpouring of compelling and frequently glamorous imagery and he
continued to be a ubiquitous graphic presence on the walls of Italian towns and cities.
From early on in hie career he had always maintained a parallel career as an artist
and despite the incredibly prolific nature of his commercial work never gave up on painting, even
though he had conspicuously less success with it. Although Mussolini's fascist party had become
the Italian government as early as 1922 Dudovich appears to have ignored the dictatorship and stuck
to non-political subjects in his posters, while others eagerly expressed their support of the
regime. In the middle of the 1930s he did create a few posters which were blatantly nationalist
in nature, some of which used fascist icons, and there were a few others celebrating Mussolini's
African colonies, but the political landscape was never a dominant aspect of his output.
It was around 1930 that he first met the younger illustrator Walter Resentera and Dudovich not only
employed him as an assistant, but they were also worked together on murals, including this series
of aviation-themed paintings between 1931 and 1933. And in 1935 Resentera became his son in
law through marriage to Dudovich's daughter. During the 1930s there was some evidence in
his posters that at least a little of the more angular influence of art deco had finally filtered
into his approach, but he remained resolutely tonal and textural in his colouring and its
combination with more modernist styling made for an aesthetically pleasing impression which helped
to prevent his work looking dated, as had happened with some of his Stile Liberty contemporaries.
So throughout the decade he remained a prolific and versatile graphic presence,
with a collection of memorable upbeat posters reflecting the generally affluent and rapidly
changing times, with the emphasis increasingly on technology and travel.
In 1937 Dudovich left Italy altogether to stay in Libya as a guest of his niece, who lived there,
and he spent much of his time there drawing and painting the people and places he observed.
He did carry on creating commercial work too, but following Italy's entrance into the second world
war this time as Germany's ally, his output slowed dramatically and by 1942 they he had stopped
designing posters altogether, and he didn't return to commercial activity until the war had ended.
And by the time he did resume his work on posters in the later 1940s it seems he had lost some of
his momentum. And although not exactly few and far between, the remarkable outpouring of creative
productivity that had defined his career up to the war was certainly now a thing of the past.
Nevertheless his postwar visual identity, however sparse, didn't look particularly
dated, and his visual wit and lighthearted approach to the advertising of all manner of
products with likeable and memorable images had lost none of its appeal.
Dudovich's last posters for la Rinascente were produced in 1950, marking the end of
an extraordinary partnership which had lasted for three decades. A handful of other posters
appeared sporadically in subsequent years but at the end of the 1950s he had obviously
had enough of commercial work and returned to painting full time for the rest of his life.
And Marcello Dudovich died in Milan from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 84 in 1962.
In his lifetime he had created thousands of posters and other assorted images
over a career spanning 5 decades. And although there had been some evolution in his stylistic
approach and certainly in the nature of the imagery he created he had managed to stay
relevant for the entirety of his working life. As with others I've covered in the series I can't
for the life of me imagine how Marcello Dudovich has become so obscure, and although I believe he
is still quite well remembered in Italy at least by those who care about such things,
I would be very surprised if many viewers of this channel were aware of his existence. And
I'll be very happy if this video changes that situation to any significant degree.