Exhibitions
Artist's Manifesto: The Film Poster as a Meeting Point Between Art and Cinema
The National Cinema Museum in Turin presents, until the end of May, the exhibition Manifesti d'Artista , curated by Nicoletta Pacini and Tamara Sillo, a collection of 10 large-format film posters ranging from the Futurism of Prampolini and Scarpelli to the graphic elegance of Toddi and Vera D'Angara, passing through the expressive power of Rodčenko for Battleship Potemkin and the creative genius of Baj and Guttuso. A carefully curated selection that traces some of the key moments in film history through advertising.
From advertising tool to independent work of art, these are some of the most important film posters from the silent and sound eras, the protagonists of this exhibition. The exhibition as a whole constructs a narrative about the relationship between cinema and art, establishing a constant dialogue between disciplines that draw from one another. In this way, each piece functions not only as a film advertisement, but also as a testament to an era and an evolving visual language.
The works on display, belonging to the museum's collections but mostly presented for the first time, demonstrate a significant advancement in the creation of advertising posters. In this process, artists of the time imbued the poster with a value comparable to that of a work of art, experimenting with typography, colors, and compositions that reflected the prevailing artistic trends and context. Thus, posters acquired an artistic autonomy that, with time and in retrospect, transcends the function for which they were conceived, establishing themselves as collector's items and objects of study.
Each artist's vision is present and distinct in every poster in the collection. Through their remarkable capacity for creative transformation, their application of graphic design, and their expressive freedom, these artists, who only occasionally worked in film promotion, manage to capture the cultural vitality of the years in which they lived and worked. The result is an exhibition that not only documents a practice but also invites us to reconsider the poster as a space for aesthetic experimentation and a crossroads between art, industry, and visual communication.
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