Gros, Mario

Mario Gros (1888 - 1977) was an Italian painter, artist, graphic designer, and entrepreneur. Born in Torino (Turin), Gros showed artistic skill from a young age and apprenticed as an engraver while attending the local art school Accademia Albertina, where he studied with painters Giovanni Guarlotti (1869 - 1954) and Romolo Bernardi (1876 - 1956). After completing art school, he began work as a chromolithographic engraver (artist), mainly designing advertising posters. He then designed movie posters for the film studios Pittaluga and Ambrosio, depicting many of the early stars of Italian cinema and dubbed Italian versions of major foreign films. In 1925, he and two partners founded their own firm, Gros Monti and Company. Overcoming some early difficulties, the company eventually flourished, signing major clients such as Fiat, producing posters for local municipalities, and expanding to Rome. However, the company's printworks was destroyed in a bombing in 1942. Although not the most prolific producer of propaganda for Mussolini's fascist regime, the firm also produced some propaganda works. In the postwar period, the company was relaunched and eventually (c. 1954) changed its name to Mario Gros and Company. It found renewed success with advertising, capturing the heady atmosphere of the postwar economic miracle, and some (anti-Communist) political posters, in the process bringing in a new generation of artists such as Armando Testa (1917 - 1992).