Three grinning faces crowd the top of the page — drawn as broad ethnic caricatures of Africa, the Americas and Asia — to act out the single line of copy beneath them: «Conosciutissima in tutto il mondo». Known the world over. It is the one sheet in this group selling something you could buy at a pharmacy.
The product needs no explanation the label does not give: MAGNESIA S. PELLEGRINO, «il più efficace fra i purganti», its hexagonal label drawn at the centre like a seal. The world-knows-it conceit is standard export advertising of the period, and its imagery is equally of its time: the three faces are colonial-era caricatures, published here as a document of how Italian advertising drew the world in those years, not as anything to celebrate.
A signature that does not say what it is claimed to say
This sheet has a real cursive signature at the top right — and a contested reading. The collector’s note gives it to Gino Boccasile, «chiaramente visibile»; enlarged, the letters do not support that reading: the hand writes something closer to «Cussino», with an underline, and nothing in it resembles the «G. Boccasile» signature found on documented Boccasile work — including the signed LATI design published elsewhere in this collection. We have found no documented poster artist under the Cussino name either, so the sheet is published without an author: the signature is there, legible enough to refuse one attribution, not legible enough to establish another.
Date
No date is printed; the collector places it with the 1938 magazine series this group belongs to, which is consistent with its format and printing but not independently confirmed.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- The sheet itself, for the product, the copy and the signature.
- Our article on the signed Boccasile design for LATI, for comparison of the signatures
