Amleto Dalla Costa

AMLETO DALLA COSTA (Milan, 1929–2024).
Untitled.
Silkscreen print, edition 14/90.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Printer: Dalla Costa.
Measurements: 40 x 40 cm.

A representative work from Amleto Dalla Costa’s mature period, this silkscreen encapsulates the essential elements of his artistic universe. The work reveals his interest in pop aesthetics and the representation of the female figure, expressed through a vibrant chromatic richness, a refined formal synthesis, and a poetic dimension that played a fundamental role in the international dissemination of his work.

Amleto Dalla Costa’s career is particularly unique due to his close ties to the worlds of fashion, advertising, and the visual arts. In the early 1950s, he founded the ARDACO photography studio (an acronym for ARmani DAlla COsta) with Giorgio Armani, dedicated to fashion photography in Milan. After the two parted ways professionally, Dalla Costa pursued a successful career in advertising, collaborating with major Italian firms before devoting himself fully to painting in 1975. A year later, he opened the Brera 3 gallery in the heart of Milan’s Brera arts district, a space that served as both a gallery and a screen-printing studio and played a decisive role in promoting his work.

Throughout his career, he participated in more than 250 solo and group exhibitions held in numerous European countries, as well as in Japan, South Africa, and the United States. His work was featured at the 51st Venice Biennale, and following a final exhibition held in Switzerland in 2006, he decided to devote himself exclusively to photography once again. Thanks to the consistency of his body of work, the technical quality of his pieces, and the popularity of his images, his work achieved widespread international recognition and continues to be appreciated by collectors and lovers of contemporary figurative art. His legacy establishes him as one of the most representative figures in contemporary Italian graphic art and figurative art.

Although he worked in multiple disciplines, Dalla Costa is best known for his advertising posters and silkscreen prints. His work focuses primarily on the depiction of elegant, sophisticated female figures with great expressive power, constructed through balanced compositions, defined lines, and an intense richness of color.

Amleto Dalla Costa was a prominent Italian artist whose career spanned painting, silkscreen printing, photography, graphic design, sculpture, and advertising. A self-taught artist by nature, he developed a multidisciplinary career that made him a unique figure on the Italian art scene in the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. Before devoting himself fully to art, he worked in various fields related to visual communication, animation, design, and fashion—experiences that had a decisive influence on the development of his own distinctive and easily recognizable visual language. From a very young age, he showed an innate talent for drawing. At sixteen, he was hired by Ars Film, the studio run by Nino and Toni Pagot, where he worked for two years on the production of animated films. He later joined Fabbriche Riunite, a company specializing in the design of neon signs, which were very popular in Italy in the 1950s. Among the most notable projects from this period was the creation of the marquee for Milan’s famous Capitol cinema, one of the country’s most iconic movie theaters. After shifting his professional focus to photography, he met Armani, with whom he founded the Ardaco studio in the early 1950s; based in Milan, it specialized in fashion photography. He later left the firm to devote himself to the field of advertising, where he achieved notable recognition. Between 1955 and 1975, he collaborated on numerous campaigns for some of Italy’s leading companies, including Carabelli, Marazzi, and Rivarossi, creating a large number of posters, advertisements, and graphic designs that helped define the visual identity of these brands. During this period, he and his brother had the honor of presenting Pope John Paul II with a box containing a toy train manufactured by Rivarossi. In 1975, he decided to devote himself entirely to painting. His first solo exhibition was an immediate success and marked the beginning of a new professional phase. The following year, he opened the Brera 3 gallery in Milan’s historic Brera arts district, located at number 3 on the street of the same name. There he also set up his screen-printing studio, where he produced much of his graphic work until the gallery closed in 1999. Amleto Dalla Costa’s significance lies in his ability to fuse the aesthetic resources of art and advertising into an attractive, elegant, and accessible visual language. He also contributed significantly to the dissemination of contemporary graphic art through silkscreen printing, a technique he mastered with great skill and which played an essential role in the international expansion of his work.