Let's remember Metlicovitz the originality of various posters dedicated to industrial or commercial products such as his commitment to events such as the Milan International Exhibition of 1906, and finally his designs for famous operas (Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Turandot) and films of the era of the silent film (first of all Cabiria, historical forerunner of the blockbuster).
Initially a painter and then a lithographer, he followed years of work at the Ricordi Graphic Workshops in Milan, then became, thanks to the intuition of Giulio Ricordi, a great expert in the art of chromolithography and a designer of those "figurative notices" - at the time billboards were called this way – which changed the face of the cities with their chromaticism, also marking in Italy the birth of that art of advertising on what international "modernism" was proposing in the applied arts under the various names of Jugendstil, Modern Style, Art Nouveau, Liberty.
Trieste is now dedicating the first major monographic retrospective to him on the 150th anniversary of his birth. With the title “Metlicovitz. The art of desire.
Posters of an advertising pioneer ", exhibition set up at the Revoltella Civic Museum and at the "Carlo Schmidl" Civic Theater Museum from 6 December 2018 to 7 March 2019, to then move on to the Salce National Collection Museum in Treviso from 6 April to 18 August 2019.
The exhibition is curated by the art historian and writer Roberto Curci and directed by Laura Carlini Fanfogna, director of the Museums and Libraries Service, and by Marta Mazza, director of the Salce Collection National Museum. There are 73 works on display, posters (some of "giant" size), three paintings and a rich selection of "minor graphics" (postcards, magazine covers, musical scores, etc.), in eight exhibition sections, seven of which are housed in the Revoltella Civic Museum and one – the section dedicated to theatrical posters for operas and operettas – in the Attilio Selva Room on the ground floor of Palazzo Gopcevich, seat of the “Carlo Schmidl” Civic Theater Museum. Most of the works come from the Museo Nazionale Collezione Salce in Treviso (68 posters), as well as from the civic collections (Civico Museo Revoltella and Civic Theater Museum "Carlo Schmidl") and from private collections.
"Metlicovitz's poster production, as well as that of his friend Dudovich, was - underlines Roberto Curci - particularly intense in the years preceding the Great War, with the creation of authentic masterpieces that remained for a long time in the visual memory of Italians and are still widely cited and reproduced in every study on the evolution of the advertising message of the twentieth century. To this excellent artist, naturally shy and extraneous to any worldliness, to the rehearsals - fascinating for verve and stylistic elegance - which he donated both to commercial realities such as the popular Neapolitan Department Stores of the Mele Brothers and to the musical and theatrical universe, spiritually to him congenial (an acquaintance of Verdi, he was a friend above all of Puccini), this exhibition is dedicated to it, which aims to represent the "whole Metlicovitz", an extraordinary poster designer, of course, but also an excellent painter and effective graphic designer and illustrator".
