Mario Schifano (Khoms 1934-Rome 1998)

He was born in Khoms, Libya, but his family soon moved to Rome. From an early age he showed an interest in art and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, although he abandoned his academic studies to go and work with his father, an archaeologist and restorer, in the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia. He began to create his first works influenced by the Informal art of the 1940s and exhibited for the first time at the Galleria Appia Antica in Rome in 1959. His first paintings were monochrome canvases, on which the artist glued paper and letters. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the artist became a central figure in the Roman art scene. Together with the artists Mimmo Rotella, Tano Festa, Franco Angeli, Giosetta Fioroni, Renato Mambor, Sergio Lombardo and Cesare Tacchi, he became part of the Piazza del Popolo school and frequented the iconic Caffè Rosati, a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, directors and film stars. Together with other artists, he exhibited in 1960 at the Roman gallery La Salita. He travelled to the United States where he met Andy Warhol, the father of Pop Art. In New York Schifano attended the Factory and took part in the 1963 exhibition New Realists organised at the Sidney Janis Gallery. After the American experience he exhibited in numerous shows in European cities such as Paris, Milan, Rome and Venice. It was in the latter city that he took part in the 32nd Biennale, exhibiting a selection of paintings such as his Paesaggi Ane-mici, which were extraordinarily successful. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, the artist became more and more established on the art scene, gaining more and more celebrity. During these years, he abandoned painting for a short time, opting for techniques such as silk-screen printing. His passion for experimentation led him to use media and television. In the last years of his life he produced the computerised canvases, in which the artist lost images from the computer and transferred them onto emulsified.