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Cappiello Radiola SFER-20 1925 | Vintage Advertising Poster
Cappiello Radiola SFER-20 1925 | Vintage Advertising Poster
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A bare-shouldered woman rests her hand on the dial of a deep burgundy mantel radio, eyes closed, as multicoloured waves sweep outward across the composition. Each ribbon of colour, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, sage green, pale violet, carries the name of a European city the Radiola SFER-20 could receive: Berne, Prague, Bruxelles, Madrid, Londres, Rome, Paris, Geneve. The bold footer delivers the headline in two registers: white sans-serif above, then outsized yellow display type, UNE SEULE MANOEUVRE avec le "SFER-20" RADIOLA. One operation. A continent of sound.
Leonetto Cappiello (1875–1942) designed this lithograph in 1925 for the Radiola brand, printed by Devambez, Paris, under the Les Nouvelles Affiches Cappiello imprint. By 1925, Cappiello held an exclusive contract with Devambez and had spent more than two decades refining the single-image advertising poster into a distinct graphic form. The SFER-20 commission is notable in his output for its chromatic range: the swirling wave field gave him the entire sheet to work with colour in a way his characteristic dark-ground compositions did not permit. The result sits at the intersection of his functionalist single-message instinct and the saturated Art Deco palette then gaining ground in Paris.
The SFER-20 was a superheterodyne receiver, one of the first single-control radio sets to make European broadcast reception genuinely accessible. Cappiello's solution to the brief, one gesture, eight cities, is as economical as anything he produced.
Reproduced from archival source material on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, using pigment-based archival inks. The smooth matte surface and natural white ground preserve the poster's original tonal depth. A considered addition to any collection focused on early 20th-century French commercial art.
