In addition to being an obvious marketing tool, advertising gives us a picture of society that is worth analyzing. The advertising message today has many more means of transmission than in the past in which posters were the masters. There Nando Salce collection of Treviso, today National Museum of the Salce Collection, collects more than 25 thousand from the end of the nineteenth century to the sixties and leafing through them we discover many things about what we were. Their archive can be consulted online for free and we assure you it's worth a look!
Under the sign of elegance
It is well known that the dealer portray a happy and often opulent world to which the individual wishes he could belong. This means that the posters do not always tell us what many of us were, but rather what few were but many would have liked to be. In fact, beautiful, elegant and refined men and women populate many posters, witnessing a rosy and happy world that could hardly belong to everyone but which inevitably lights up our imagination. Just think of the posters of the famous Mele Warehouses of the beginning of the century, or to all the posters linked especially to beauty products, fashion and perfumes.
The posters you don't expect
Some posters will not fail to make us smile. Some will do so thanks to their playful subjects, such as the monkey brushing its teeth in Aleardo Terzi's famous 1914 poster advertising a brand of toothpaste. Others do it because we are surprised at the way some products are advertised. The bicycle represented in the manifesto by Alberto Giacomo Spiridione Martini of 1900-1910 almost seems like a vehicle of great class and refinement. Or, how used are we today to using Bic ballpoint pens? Yet in 1960-62 there were some hilarious colorful posters advertising them!
Posters between yesterday and today
It will probably also surprise a lot to see some posters especially from the 50s in which the observer can only recognize well-known elements. In fact, the Salce Collection also includes some posters from Barilla, Spic & Span, Neutro-Roberts (then only Roberts). Again from Simmenthal, Nivea, Cinzano, Formaggino Mio and the Star cube. Perhaps we are surprised by the presence of that beautiful red poster of Pai chips in a bag dated 1959-1965. Or even that of Leon Garù from 1954 who advertises Alitalia flights. Even though it's been more than half a century, seeing some of these posters it seems that some things have remained exactly the same.
# Italian in the heart
