Encounter with Silvano Campeggi

Florentine, owes his fame principally to his activities as a film poster designer for Hollywood cinema production houses in the golden age of cinema (1945/1970). In the United States he is considered as one of the most important graphic artists in the history of American cinema.

It was his father, a typographer and printer that introduced the young Silvano to graphics and design. Campeggi attended the Istituto D'Arte at Porta Romana in Florence, and studied with Ottone Rosaid and Ardengo Soffici. At the end of the Second World War he received a commission from the American Red Cross to paint some portraits of soldiers on leave; which allowed him to come into contact with the culture, the music and the cinema across the ocean. After the war he transferred to Rome, where he entered into contact with the painter Orfeo Tamburi and with the poster designer Luigi Martinati and established his interest for cinema billboard posters. His first billboard poster was in 1946 for the film Black Eagle by Riccardo Freda. After a very short time he was contracted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the realisation of the billboard poster for the film Gone with the Wind, which was then followed by 3000 other works, not only for MGM but also for Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, Columbia Pictures, United Artists, RKO, Twentieth Century Fox. Of his most famous billboard posters: Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, An American in Paris, West Side Story, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Winner for Exodus and Breakfast at Tiffany's.