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A print of Esposizione Rhodia Albene (Rhodia & Albene Fabric Show), 1936, by Marcello Dudovich.
Marcello Dudovich was one of the greatest Italian graphic designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Trained at the prestigious Royal Academy in Trieste, he was instrumental in the huge advances made in Italian poster design during this time, along with his contemporaries Leonetto Cappiello and Leopoldo Metlicovitz.
Here, Dudovich relies on familiar motifs for his longtime client, the nationwide department store La Rinascente, for which he had been producing graphic work for more than 15 years. In this appeal to glamour, he modernizes the sweeping movements of the figures in opera posters he had created throughout his career, embodied in the confident strides and expressions of these female protagonists. As in much of the design of the period, nationalism plays a part, with the understated red, white, and green tones of the Italian flag prominent in the clothing of the future-facing models.
In spite of the feeling of luxury, however, the poster is selling unstated austerity: Rhodia and Albene fabrics were offered as sleek, new alternatives to silk and satin. In reality, Rhodia was made from pressed, purified cellulose (wood pulp) and Albene was flat-threaded rayon with an acetate base—both cheap materials suited to the budgets of the many Italians still suffering from the Depression but marketed as the height of opulence.
Measures 15.25 x 11 inches. Ships rolled.
Image provided by Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli Collection, Bologna.
© 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome
