Metlicovitz. L’arte del desiderio – Manifesti di un pioniere della pubblicità

No more than half a dozen, between the very end of the 19th century and the first fifteen years of the 20th, the Italian pioneers of the art of advertising posters gave life to timeless true masterpieces of public bill-posting. Among them, two artists from Trieste: Leopoldo Metlicovitz (1868-1944) and Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962), both especially active in the Milanese context of the Officine Grafiche Ricordi.

The major exhibition that the Municipality of Trieste dedicated to Dudovich in 2002-2003 is now being followed by this ambitious event which, by putting on show more than 70 large-format posters and dozens of examples of “minor” graphics (book covers, postcards, music scores), aims to celebrate the figure and work of Leopoldo Metlicovitz on the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Greatly admired and reproduced, this highly prolific artist, as hard-working as he was modest and reserved, never enjoyed the popularity and critical success received by his friend-pupil-rival Dudovich. It is therefore appropriate and only fair that we should reassert the value of his art, thanks above all to the wide selection of posters held by Museo Nazionale Collezione Salce in Treviso, where the exhibition will be transferred next spring.

The exhibition, curated by the art historian and writer Roberto Curci, is on display in two important museums of Trieste: the Revoltella Museum, where it takes up the ground–floor rooms, the Sala Scarpa and the fifth floor of the Gallery, and the “Carlo Schmidl” Theatrical Museum, which houses, in the Sala Attilio Selva on the ground floor, the section devoted to posters for operas and operettas.

---

info and opening times

Civico Museo Revoltella - Galleria d'Arte Moderna
via Diaz 27
daily 9-19 (closed on Tuesdays)
+ 39 040 675 4350
www.museorevoltella.it

Civico Museo Teatrale "Carlo Schmidl"
Sala Attilio Selva
via Rossini 4
daily 10-17
+ 39 040 675 4039
www.museoschmidl.it

special joint ticket
for a single admission, on the same or on different days, to the two museums hosting the exhibition
Full price: 8 euro
Reduced price: 5 euro