International Poster Gallery

L'Apéro! by Renée Schettler
...This early, unregulated age of alcohol advertising coincided with the Art Nouveau movement that swept across Europe in the early 1890s. Artist Jules Chéret promoted aperitifs in joyful posters featuring his trademark swoops, swirls and flourishes. "Those full-color, life-size advertisements were unprecedented," explains Jim Lapides, art historian and owner of the International Poster Gallery in Boston. "They drew a lot of attention and inspired an entire generation of poster artists." Painter Leonetto Cappiello, known as the father of modern advertising, later produced simpler, sleeker images that not only captivated passersby on Paris's busy boulevards but instilled in them a memory of the actual product -- the beginning of branding.