September 8 2024

The Art of Seeing : The glasses advertising posters

The world of eyewear between representation and form

Dear Urbani's People...

If you are planning a visit to Venice and our design suggestions have intrigued you, we would like to point out an interesting immersion into the world of advertising illustration related to glasses and their symbolism.

The Salce Collection National Museum in Treviso, a few miles from Venice, presents the exhibition "Art of Seeing. Posters and Eyewear from the Salce and Stramare Collections." Set up in the former church of Santa Margherita, the exhibition explores the world of eyewear with two levels of interpretation: representation, through vintage advertising posters, and form, thanks to the collection of historical eyewear.

The exhibition

The exhibition presents an extraordinary collection of 87 affiches, all of high graphic quality and signed by well-known names in Italian and international poster artists. The images range from the seductive elegance of the Belle Époque to more contemporary subjects, illustrating the stylistic and conceptual evolution of eyewear representation. From a graphic point of view, it emerges how the round shape symbolizes the eyewear object in its different symbolic values.

There is no shortage of advertisements for today's famous eyewear brands and trademarks, such as Persol, which were already promoting their products as cutting-edge sun protection accessories at the time.