Background

Mario Ballocco was born on June 24, 1913 in Milan, Lombardia, Italy.

Education

Mario studied with Aldo Carpi at the Accademia di Brera until 1947.

Career

After studying at the Accademia di Brera, in 1947 Mario went to Argentina, in contact with Lucio Fontana. Together with Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Ettore Colla, he was the founder of the Origin Group in Milan in 1950. He also created and directed the magazines AZ from 1949 to 1952 and Color, Aesthetics and Logic from 1957 to 1964. Mario curated the Milan exhibitions of design and industrial aesthetics and an exhibition on the history of photography at the Fair in 1952 and 1953 respectively. In 1954 at the Turin Motor Show he presented his research on the new uses of color applied to industrial production and in relation to its visual-optical and psychological function.

Ballocco was also the inventor of the "chromatology", an interdisciplinary method for the solution of "visual problems of collective interest": from the color of the ambulances to that of the notebooks for the students of the schools. His goal was to defeat the monotony "that makes us born with white, live with gray and die with black". At the beginning of the seventies, Ballocco introduced the chromatology as a subject of study at the Brera Academy, and subsequently held courses also at the Carrara of Bergamo and at the Polytechnic of Milan. In 1958 at the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica in Milan, he organized the first exhibition on Color, which was divided into inductive chromatological sectors (physics, physiology, psychology) and experimental sectors (color in treatment, study, working environments, in public services, in traffic signs, etc.).

Ballocco took part in Venice Biennale in 1970 and 1986. Mario died on October 25, 2008 in Milan. His works are preserved in many important Italian and foreign collections and museums.

Achievements

• Mario Ballocco was highly famous as the founder of the Origine group, one of the first movements in Italy focused on a non-figurative art.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Grata scultura

  • Reticolo nero diversi blu rosso verso destra

  • Double face

  • Induzione cromatica (bianco, rosato, azzurrato) e formale (stratificazione alternante dischi e quadri in primo piano)

  • Incomunicabilità

  • Homo

  • Alternanza di contrasto

  • Compenetrazione quadrangolare di due ordini di chiarezze di tonalità nm 498 ca. (blu) e 587 ca. (ocra)

  • Induzione figurale (del rettangolo in diagonale) sfalsata

  • Monadi

  • Sequenze quadrangolari - concetto di distorsione

  • Problemi di stratificazione

  • Grata nera fondo multicolore (Origine)

  • Asimmetria reticolare

  • L'homo perplesso

  • Contrasti simultanei

  • Problemi di unificazione per uguaglianza cromatica

  • Dynamic Effect: Forwards and Backwards From Glossy and Flat

  • Grata nera

  • L'ammonizione - Sputa sentenze?

  • Figure Alteration

  • Tensioni formali da instabilità luminosa

  • Effetti indotti di contrasto e di assimilazione di tonalità complementare (al rosso scuro)

  • Fisionomia del viso dell'homo

  • Coperta (Incontro di due homines)

  • Grata nera blu cobalto oltremare Parigi

  • L'amore, il bacio, l'estasi

  • Homines impauriti dal sole nero

  • Homines giganti

  • Homo verde

  • Untitled

Views

Mario Ballocco adhered to the artistic traditions of Concretism.

Membership

• Origine Group

  1950 - 2008

Personality

Mario was an original experimenter, a man with a thousand interests, and a forerunner in many fields.

Connections

Friend:

Lucio Fontana

colleague:

Alberto Burri

colleague:

Guiseppe Capogrossi

colleague:

Ettore Colla

References

• MARIO BALLOCCO: WERKE, 1949-1972 (Mario Ballocco: Works, 1949-1972)
  1973
• Mario Ballocco. Odissea dell'Homo Sapiens-The Odissey of Homo sapiens. Catalogo della mostra (Roma, 1 ottobre 2010-6 febbraio 2011)
  2011