THE ITALIAN SEASON IN ZAKOPANE
May 15 – October 31, 2010
The Władysław Hasior Gallery
ul. Jagiellońska 18 b, Zakopane
This collection of 160 labels with mountain motifs used on boxes to transport fruit dates from between 1900 and 1960 and constitutes an unusual look at the world of mountains. It comes from Italy's National Mountain Museum's collection in Turin. Fruit box labels are a typically American phenomenon. They appeared in the American West when the gold rush came to an end and the pioneers who had settled in the Rocky Mountains began to grow fruit and vegetables. Among the 160 labels on display, we find examples from Canada and Spain, but also a significant collection of Italian labels.
The development of railways allowed manufacturers to transport merchandise rapidly to large cities. As every fruit was individually wrapped in paper, there was a need to describe the content of each box in a basic way. Such descriptions began to appear on large labels, stuck on the shorter side of wooden boxes used for transport.
Later, in the mid-1950s, boxes made of corrugated cardboard, lighter and cheaper material, become popular and replaced wooden boxes. The labels were no longer needed, as the information on the content, quality and promotion of the product could be written directly on the box.
Most American labels and some Canadian and Spanish ones were made in the technique similar to lithography, while Italian labels were printed with a few coloured matrices.
The Italian labels form only a small part of the exhibition; they feature simple drawings, far from the elegance which was characteristic for the graphic arts in the early 20th century; its iconography is simple and comprehensible to all.
On all the labels on display, we see mountains in the background, most often the Dolomites and Mount Etna, and in the foreground - country girls with voluptuous figures. They attract our attention and provoke the viewer in a moderate way, but they never exceed certain limits. They are, perhaps, deliberately not too elegant, because they are not meant to compete with housewives who bought vegetables or fruit in the market.
