The exhibition is based on a significant selection from the 25,000 documents from the ‘advertising graphics’ section kept in the archives of the Italian Liners association, with some additional contributions from private collections in Trieste. Curated by naval historian Maurizio Eliseo with the contribution of Sergio Vatta, it recounts the golden age of sea transport, eventually supplanted by air transport, but also of a host of graphic designers and illustrators, later replaced by skilled photographers. This era was the result of the Industrial Revolution, which radically changed sea travel as well as printing techniques: on the one hand, the great steamships were born, which, thanks to mechanical propulsion, freed water transport from winds and currents; on the other hand, systems for high print runs and for the reproduction of colour images were introduced, which led to the birth of large printing houses and new professional figures, designers, composers and graphic artists who had to effectively convey the promotional message with their images. Promotional graphics thus became an art, and the ocean liner, the largest, most majestic and complex self-propelled object ever conceived by man, was one of its favourite subjects.

The press and steamships would share a rapid evolution, which in ‘A Sea of Paper’ is recounted through an introductory section and four macro time areas: from the dawn to the Great War, the 1920s, the 1930s and the post-World War II period, up to the decline of the liner.

In 1818, the first regular liner service with Venice was inaugurated in Trieste by the steamship Carolina. Within a few decades, the mechanically propelled ship would establish its supremacy and, in the mid 19th century, numerous steamship companies began to offer regular liner services. The exhibition opens with the first colour map of steamship lines along the Italian peninsula (1844) and one of the oldest surviving posters, announcing the 1874 departure of the steamship Columbus from Genoa to Latin America. The last poster in the itinerary dates back to 1965 and is dedicated to the entry into service of the last Italian ocean liners, the Michelangelo and Raffaello twins: here, for the first time, a photograph takes the place of a drawing, decreeing the end of an era.