Olio Radino
Artist
Gino Boccasile
Italy, 1901 - 1952
Printer
Fiorin, Milano
Italy
Date1950
Dimensions13 x 9 1/2 in. (33 x 24.1 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.216
DescriptionIn Gino Bocasile’s poster, one of the cheerful and provocative young women who tended to be the focus of his compositions, pours olive oil onto a salad in the foreground while a man behind her on a ladder picks the olives that are its source. The suggestion is clearly that the oil tastes as fresh as if it had been pressed from freshly picked olives. The Radino family firm founded a series of shops in Milan to sell its olive oil in the early 1950s and Bocasile’s posters and logo contributed considerably to the huge success of the venture. Bocasile was already an established illustrator of posters and commercial advertisements as well as books and periodicals before the war; after beginning his career at the Mauzan-Morzenti advertising agency in Milan, he set up his own agency, ACTA, in the city in 1932. During the war, however, he became a fanatical supporter of Mussolini and produced numerous vitriolic and racist posters in support of Fascism and the Axis Powers. By late 1946, however, he was working again for many of his original Italian clients, producing painterly poster designs for holiday destinations and domestic appliances featuring his signature alluring women and chubby babies. On View
Not on view
