Mario Schifano

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Mario Schifano

Artist's Name:

Mario Schifano

Preferred medium:

painting

birth year:

1934

Nationality:

City:

Rome

Mario Schifano - Profile

In the 1960s, Schifano began painting monochromes using enamel house paint as his medium, a revolutionary use of non-traditional art materials that aligned the artist with his Arte Povera colleagues whose work developed later in the decade. Schifano was also interested in television and the moving image and believed that the future of painting lied therein. Many of his canvases from the 1960s present a square shape of color, itself a reference to a television screen, with drippings, gestural expressions and traces of dirt to remind the viewer that these are indeed paintings, in contrast to the flat monochromy favored by other European artists at the time. After abandoning his successful cycle of monochromes, in 1964 he started working in the genre of landscape, continuing to experiment with materials and process, composition and style. In these works, Schifano emptied the space of the painting by introducing fragments of plastic materials-perspex boards 'bolted' onto the canvas-which suggest an interest in a broader concept of painting contaminated by the new technological age. Schifano also used writing in his work, incorporating cursive and block letters along with co-opted iconic text like the Coca-Cola logo, in ways that parallel Ed Ruscha's work of the same period. The early body of work on view in the exhibition clearly indicates Schifano's significant contribution to post-war painting and the artist's radical techniques that anticipated several art movements to come. (Sperone Westwater, New York)

important exhibitions from Mario Schifano

Exhibition	Location	City	Country	Date
48. Biennale Venedig 1999	Biennale Venedig	Venedig	IT	13.06.1999

Mario Schifano	Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna	Rom	IT	11.06.2008

Fondazione Prada - Ca Corner della Regina	Fondazione Prada	Mailand	IT	01.06.2011

Mario Schifano trilogia d'artista	MLAC - Museo Laboratorio d'Arte Contemporaneo	Rom	IT	11.05.2004

Ileana Sonnabend. An Italian Portrait	Peggy Guggenheim Collection	Venedig	IT	29.05.2011

Mario Schifano - America anemica	Palazzo Pigorini	Parma	IT	03.05.2008

Mario Schifano Paintings 1960-1966	Sperone Westwater	New York	US	11.01.2007

Schifano e la sua fotografia	Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea	Bologna	IT	24.09.2005

Mario Schifano - I colori della Beat Generation	Villa Ponti Fondazione Art Museo	Arona	IT	19.03.2005

Dalla Pop art alla Minimal	MART - Museo Trento e Rovereto	Rovereto	IT	28.09.2005