Vintage Poster Archives
Cappiello Marie Brizard 1928 | Vintage Advertising Poster
Cappiello Marie Brizard 1928 | Vintage Advertising Poster
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A woman in a voluminous crimson gown occupies the full height of the composition, her feathered headdress in red, black and cream rising against a solid jet-black ground. White feather or cloud motifs swirl across the dress in rounded masses. Her face is turned in profile, pale and composed. Below, amber-gold lettering carries the brand name across a deep burgundy base strip. The figure is isolated completely, no background, no context, nothing but the character and the black void: Cappiello's signature method.
Designed by Leonetto Cappiello (1875–1942) in 1928 for Maison Marie Brizard et Roger, the Bordeaux anisette house founded in 1755. By 1928, Cappiello was producing work through Devambez in Paris, and the Marie Brizard commission gave him the rare brief of advertising a liqueur with nearly two centuries of French heritage. He reached back to the Bourbon baroque of the brand's founding era and rendered it as a single bold theatrical character in the flat graphic style of 1920s French commercial art.
Cappiello had pioneered the isolated-figure-on-black approach from around 1900, and by the late 1920s it had become his most recognisable contribution to advertising design. This poster is a late and assured example: the colour palette restricted to crimson, cream and black, the typography integrated into the base as a visual counterweight, the composition entirely governed by one central performance.
A natural choice for anyone drawn to early 20th-century French graphic design, the Art Deco period in advertising, or the history of European spirits marketing.
