Italian Masters
3000 Times: Silvano "Nano" Campeggi, Posters––Affiches––Manifesti
May 16 – June 13, 2007
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery are honored to present this rare exhibition of images by the premiere illustrator of classic Hollywood poster art, Silvano Campeggi, better known as Nano.
“Selecting the right paintings for this exhibit has been a very challenging process, as I had to pick them from among more than 3000 pieces I created during the international Golden Era of the movies.
“Every portrait will be surrounded by references to the movies I illustrated: just a synthesis that will reach its climax through an overpowering Ben Hur white horses race.”––Silvano “Nano” Campeggi
The Furman Gallery is adjacent to the lobby of the Walter Reade Theater. The gallery is open daily 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. Special thanks to the Italian Cultural Institute of New York for making our tributes to Silvano Campeggi possible.
Silvano Campeggi is represented in the US by Florentine Connections LLC,
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The Art of the Movie Poster
by Richard Peña
A great writing on film has concerned itself with the cinema’s relationship to other artistic media. Cinema’s borrowings from theater, visual arts and literature have been exhaustively chronicled, but a subject less studied has been the impact which the cinema had on the other media—the way in which filmmaking affected storytelling in novels, or visual imagery in contemporary painting. One could also discuss the rise of what might be called “hybrid arts” created by the appearance of cinema: film music, and I would also argue the art of the film poster, among whose most brilliant and influential creators must be counted il Maestro, Silvano “Nano” Campeggi.
Film posters are practically as old as the movies themselves, the first examples appearing simultaneously with the first exhibitions of the Lumiere “cinematographe” machine in Paris and elsewhere. The first film posters were more concerned with announcing the technology itself; for cinema’s first ten years or so, audiences went to the movies more for the experience of watching projected moving images than to see any particular films. That began to change around 1910, when increasingly films started to be marketed around the presence of certain actors (“stars”) or because of their source material (a novel, play, short story, etc.). At that time, it became important for movie posters to become quite specific in terms of the product they were advertising; audiences were perhaps beyond going to the movies for the mere experience—now they were choosing what particular films they wanted to see.
This is where the true art of the movie poster could be said to begin. For most of the public, the actual experience of a film begins with the impression created by movie’s advertising; a taste or an interest is created that seeing the film subsequently will either satisfy, or in some cases (too often nowadays!) disappoint. Movie posters provide the introduction of a film to the public, a kind of magic password or talisman that draws one into another world.
The poster art of Silvano Campeggi is exemplary in this regard. His posters are always visually striking and enticing; he had a unique ability of being able to synthesize in a single image the power and attraction of a film. His poster for Stanley Kramer’s Judgement at Nuremberg is a brilliant illustration of the “banality of evil,” the cool, mechanization of murder that the Nuremberg trials painfully detailed. Or his poster for Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, in which the moral, political and emotional dilemma of Humphrey Bogart is beautifully captured by a visual play with shadow and depth.
As the field of film studies evolves, scholars have come to realize that the cinema means much more than the simple ninety minutes of celluloid we see projected in dark spaces; to study the cinema as a cultural form, one must include the entire world of business, production, advertising and related art forms in order to truly understand cinema’s decisive role in helping to shape our contemporary world. The art of the movie poster is just beginning to be seriously studied and appreciated, so it’s a great pleasure to begin this long overdue celebration at the very top, with the wonderful film posters of Silvano Campeggi.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents curated exhibits in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater that either compliment the programming or are film related art shows. Inaugurated in 1991, the space was designed by prestigious architectural firm Davis Brody and named in honor of the Furmans, longtime supporters of the Film Society.
“Selecting the right paintings for this exhibit has been a very challenging process, as I had to pick them from among more than 3000 pieces I created during the international Golden Era of the movies.
“Every portrait will be surrounded by references to the movies I illustrated: just a synthesis that will reach its climax through an overpowering Ben Hur white horses race.”––Silvano “Nano” Campeggi
The Furman Gallery is adjacent to the lobby of the Walter Reade Theater. The gallery is open daily 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. Special thanks to the Italian Cultural Institute of New York for making our tributes to Silvano Campeggi possible.
