30 Apr “Visitate l’Italia! Promozione e pubblicità turistica 1900-1950” the exhibition in Turin and a catalogue not to be missed. By Dario Cimorelli Editore and Tecnostampa, Loreto, Italy.

From 13 February to 25 August 2025, it is on display at Palazzo Madama, Turin, “Visit Italy! Promotion and tourist advertising 1900-1950“, an unpublished account of the fascinating history of Italian tourism promotion, from the end of the nineteenth century to the early years of reconstruction after the Second World War, through two hundred posters, Hundreds of illustrated guides and leaflets.

Both the exhibition and the splendid volume that collects the works on display, curated by Dario Cimorelli and Giovanni C.F. Villa, Director of Palazzo Madama, retrace the evolution of the tourist poster through the great protagonists of the Italian illustration of the early twentieth century. From the first advertising testimonials signed by important names, such as Leopoldo Metlicovitz and the young Marcello Dudovich, to which artists like Ettore Tito, Ettore Ximenes, Galileo Chini are joined, until the birth of ENIT in 1919, the National Agency for the growth of tourism industries, an event that starts the practice of entrusting promotional campaigns to a single illustrator – among these we find, for example, Mario Borgoni, Giovanni Guerrini, Marcello Nizzoli and Virgilio Retrosi – or to performers who have remained anonymous, often linked to the printers.

In the exhibition a video tells about the transformations of Italy over thirty years that separate the first and the last image.

Early twenties of the twentieth century, workers at work: bridges, roads, plants become symbols of the rapid completion of the unification of Italy and its modernization. Early fifties: tourists pose for a group photo. In between, the tourist Italy and new forms of collective recreation: sea, lake, mountain, city of art. Water sports, winter sports, summer climbing, motor racing. The fashion that adapts, the costume – and the costumes – that change. The impact of road and rail infrastructure, which brings new flows of holidaymakers and hikers from the cities to the great beaches, peaks, lakefront. Until the post-war period, and the first forms of true mass tourism, even international: with Italy that returns to be a privileged destination, preparing to embody, a few years later, the great dream of Dolce Vita.

“Visitate l’Italia! Promozione e pubblicità turistica 1900-1950”
Edited by Dario Cimorelli e Giovanni C.F. Villa

Pages: 352
Size: 23 x 28 cm
Finishing:
thread sewing hardcover
Publisher:
Dario Cimorelli Editore
Printed by:
Tecnostampa Loreto (AN) Trevi (PG) Italia

for learn more
Visitate l’Italia