Mario Schifano

Background

Schifano was born in Khoms, Libya, on September 20, 1934. He emigrated with his family to Italy after World War II.

Education

With little interest in formal schooling, Mario Schifano took up painting independently.

Career

In the early 1950s, Schifano began painting producing mixed-media artworks. They were mostly created in the Art Informel style. Between 1959 and 1961, Schifano produced a series of paintings on wrapping paper glued to canvas using only one or two colours. His works were similar to French Nouveau Réalisme. These works garnered critical acclaim and were followed by a number of exhibits both in Italy and the United States. He attracted critics’ interest with his monochrome artworks which gave the impression of a screen which subsequently displayed numbers, letters, road signs, and the Esso and Coca-Cola trademarks. The artist signed an exclusive contract with Ileana Sonnabend.

In 1962 he started to use themes from advertising. The same year he made his first trip to the United States. Around this time he was included in New Realists, an important group show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York alongside artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. There he came into direct contact with American Pop artists and was particularly inspired by the works of Jim Dine and Franz Kline.

Often incorporating elements of pop culture, such as brand logos and advertisements, his work is largely considered within the context of Pop art. Although Schifano was consistently productive and critically acclaimed, he struggled with drug addiction for most of his life, a habit that resulted in multiple arrests, which led the artist to label his career maldoto – cursed.

After his solo exhibitions in Rome, Paris, and Milan, he returned to the United States. In the year 1963, he ceased his collaboration with Ileana Sonnabend who was left puzzled by the change in his artistic production. In his later works there started to appear scenes from the history of Italian art. The first of his Anaemic Landscapes also appeared at this time. He presented it at the Venice Biennale Exhibition in 1964.

In the second half of the 1960s, Schifano became interested in cinema, television, and performance. His first short films in black and white come from this period. Mario Schifano together with guitarist Urbano Orlandi became a co-founder of the band Le Stelle and designed a booklet for their first album entitled Le ultime parole di Brandimonte. In 1968 Schifano produced the film Satellite. Also during this time, Schifano started to make screenprints, using imagery from his earlier artworks.

He started his collaboration with Giorgio Marconi which lasted until the end of the 1970s. Schifano took part in numerous international group exhibitions, including shows at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1964, and in 1965 at the San Marino and Sao Paulo of Brazil Biennial exhibitions, as well as the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

Between 1966 and 1967 he worked on the series Ossigeno Ossigeno, Tuttestelle, Oasis, and Compagni, compagni. In 1967-1969 he presented the feature film "Anna Carini vista in agosto dalle farfalle" at the Studio Marconi in Milan, which was followed by the trilogy of films "Satellite", "Umano non umano", and "Trapianto - Consunzione e morte di Franco Brocani". He participated in a group exhibit at the Galleria La Salita in Rome where he projected photograms on the Vietnam War.

In 1970, together with Tonino Guerra, he travelled for the last time to the United States, to search for filming locations for Laboratorio Umano, a film which finally was never completed. When back in Italy, he began the series Paesaggi TV where he transferred television pictures onto canvas using the technique of photographic emulsion. Initially the photographs he took in the United States were used for this series. It was not a TV culture which interested him, but the culture that developed from the televised image. He later visited Laos and Thailand, and then Africa.

In his artworks, Schifano preferred to use enamel paints, which were made for industrial production because of their ability to preserve the original brilliance and because they dry quickly. In 1971 he presented his artworks at "Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960-1970", organized by Achille Bonito Oliva. He then held one-man exhibitions in Rome, Parma, Turin and Naples. In 1973 he participated in the 10th Quadriennale Nazionale di Roma and in Contemporanea, which was also organized by Achille Bonito Oliva. In 1974 the Palazzo della Pilotta (Salone delle Scuderie) in Parma hosted his first major retrospective.

An ideological and existential crisis led periods of isolation in his studio. At this period of time he remade his own artworks from the 1960s in the series "Sintetico dall’Inventario". In 1976 he participated at the exhibition "Europa/America, l’astrazione determinata 1960-76". The show was organized at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna. In the year 1978, the artist returned to the Venice Biennale Exhibition presenting his series "Al mare" and "Quadri Equestri". He was invited to "Art e Critica" in 1980, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, in 1981 he took part in the show "Identité Italienne", held at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. His works also appeared in the exhibition "Avanguardia/ Transavanguardia" at the Mura Aureliane in 1982; at the Loggia Lombardesca in Ravenna; at the Venice Biennale Exhibition.

In 1984 he was invited to take part in the Venice Biennale Exhibition, and at the same time, Alain Cueff presented his series "Naturale sconosciuto". In this series, Schifano’s focus on nature emerged. He depicted water lilies, wheat fields, waves, deserts. In 1985, in front of six thousand people, he painted his monumental work La Chimera at Piazza Santissima Annunziata, Florence. It inaugurated the exhibition on the Etruscans.

In 1988, the Adrien Maeght gallery in Paris organized his one-man exhibition “Le secret de la jeunesse éternelle: un Faust dionysiaque”. In 1989 he was among the leading artists of the exhibition "Arte italiana del XX secolo", organized by the Royal Academy in London. His other solo exhibitions were held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Ferrara.

In 1990 he participated in the reopening of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome with Dante’s “Divulgare”, a collection of artworks of extraordinary size created with the first digital technologies. In the year 1991, Mario Schifano created the designs for the theatre set for Vincenzo Bellini's "Norma" at Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari. During the 1993 Venice Biennale Exhibition, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Schifano had a room of his own in the section "Slittamenti". In 1994 he took part in the exhibition "The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968", organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Later he exhibited his art pieces in Spain and in Latin America. In 1997 he participated in "Minimalia" at Palazzo Querini Dubois in Venice, his last exhibition.

Achievements

• 

  Mario Schifano is considered to be one of the most prolific and outstanding artists of Italian postmodernism. His works have been exhibited in various museums and galleries around the world. He became renowned not only for his paintings but also for his films and music.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Giglio d'aqua

  • Interno + Esterno

  • Detail of oasis

  • Acquatico

  • Untitled

  • Esso

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • O sole mio!

  • Cielo Par Terra

  • Il Sogno Dada di Arturo Schwarz

  • Sognato acquarello e dipinto a smalto

  • Campo di grano

  • Untitled

  • Segni di energia

  • Le Stelle

  • Ciro

  • Segnaletico N.2

  • unknown title

  • L'arbre en automne

  • Monocromo blu

  • Untitled

  • Pesci

  • Compagni, compagni

  • Propaganda

  • Coca-Cola

  • Untitled (Glasses)

  • When I Remember Giacomo Balla...

  • Albero Per Terra

  • Untitled

  • Acerbo

  • Non è romantico!

  • Disegno n. 2 per l'occhio del critico

  • Untitled

  • Il Vulcano

  • Paesaggio in Australia

  • Grande Angolo

  • Untitled

  • Solare

  • Tutte stelle + particolare dell'oasi

  • Pomeriggio anemico

  • Elemento per il Paesaggio

  • Nottetempo

  • Untitled

  • Paesaggio anemico

  • Fantasy of the Natural Patient

  • Acerbo

  • Futurismo Rivisitato

  • Coca cola (Tutto)

  • The Exact Time

• sculpture

  • Per Costruzione di Oasi

Personality

Reputed as a fruitful and distinguished artist, Mario Schifano nonetheless struggled with a lifelong drug habit that earned him the label maledetto, or "cursed."

Interests

• Artists

  Jim Dine, Franz Kline

Connections

Schifano had a relationship with Marianne Faithfull in 1969. Then Mario Schifano married Monica De Bei with whom he had a son, Marco.

Spouse:

Monica De Bei

Son:

Marco Schifano

life partner:

Marianne Faithfull

References

• Mario Schifano Mario Schifano's paintings of the period 1960-1966.
  2007
• Mario Schifano: The Eighties This monograph features extensive documentation of Schifano's lively, colorful paintings, as well as many previously unpublished photographs.
  2005