The son of an archaeologist overseeing excavations at Leptis Magna in Libya, his birthplace, Mario Schifano started his artistic journey following an apprenticeship at the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia. His debut in 1960 at La Salita Gallery in Rome, titled Cinque pittori romani: Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio, Schifano, Uncini marked the beginning of his career. Schifano swiftly attracted critical attention with his monochrome paintings, evoking a sense of a photographic screen, later incorporating numbers, letters, street signs and commercial logos like Esso and Coca Cola. His solo exhibitions soon followed in Rome, Paris, and Milan, accompanied by early recognition, including the Premio Lissone (1961) and the Fiorino and The New Figuration in Florence (1963).
In 1962, Schifano showcased his work at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York as part of the exhibition The New Realists. The following year marked his inaugural journey to the United States, where he met Frank O’Hara, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol.
During this period, Schifano’s artistic repertoire began to incorporate references from Italian art history and Futurism. He also introduced his first Paesaggi anemici unveiled at the Venice Biennale in 1964. Concurrently, he delved into filmmaking, producing short 16mm black-and-white films. He participated to a group exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (1964). Some of his works were shown at the San Marino and São Paulo Biennales in Brazil (1965), and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (1965).
Between 1966 and 1967, Schifano initiated several series such as Ossigeno ossigeno, Tuttestelle, Oasi, Compagni, compagni. Notably, he collaborated with a psychedelic rock group, Le stelle di Mario Schifano orchestrating Italy’s first multimedia live show at the group’s debut concert in December 1967. Concurrently, he participates in a group exhibition at La Salita Gallery in Rome, where he projected images of the Vietnam War rather than showcasing paintings. His deepening engagement with contemporary history and social issues precipitated an ideological and existential crisis, leading him to contemplate abandoning painting.
However, in the 1970s, Schifano embarked on his Paesaggi TV series, wherein he translated television imagery onto canvas using a photographic emulsion technique. He initially reelaborated stills captured in the United States, particularly scenes from a cardiac transplant in Houston and NASA laboratories in Alamogordo and Los Alamos. He later planned to pictorially revisit images broadcasted by RAI and other television stations. In these works, he used new, very fast drying industrial glazes of great brilliance and transparency allowing a much more extensive production. In 1971, he exhibited at Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960-70 and simultaneously his solo exhibitions opened in Rome, Parma, Turin and Naples. In 1973 he participated in the 10th Quadrennial in Rome and in Contemporanea.
Finally, in 1974 the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma hosted his first major retrospective, curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle. In 1976 he was present at the exhibition Europa/America, l’astrazione determinata 1960-76, set up at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna. Two years later, he returned to the Venice Biennale with the series Al mare e Quadri equestri, works painted with extreme grace and lightness showing a newfound creative freshness. In the early 1980s, he was invited to Arte e critica 1980 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. In 1981 he participated in the exhibition Identité italienne at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The cycles Architetture, Cosmesi, Biplani e Orti botanici are also from this period.
In 1982 his works were featured in the exhibition Avanguardia/Transavanguardia on the Aurelian Walls in Rome and at the XL International Art Biennale in Venice, where he was invited again in 1984. Simultaneously presented at the Piombi is the cycle Naturale sconosciuto, a tribute to nature. Thus, were born the Gigli d’acqua, i Campi di grano, le Onde and a series of paintings made from sand for an exhibition on deserts in Jordan. This new pictorial impulse also inspired the canvases donated to Gibellina for artistic reconstruction after the earthquake. In 1985 he painted in front of six thousand people the Chimera, a four-by-ten-meter monumental work inaugurating an exhibition on the Etruscans in Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence. In 1988, the Adrien Maeght Gallery in Paris opened the exhibition Le secret de la jeunesse éternelle, un Faust dionysiaque. In 1989 he participated to Arte italiana del XX secolo organized by the Royal Academy in London, while solo shows were held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the Ferrara Pavilion of Contemporary Art.
In 1990, after a decade of intense painting where he produced many of his most exciting works, he inaugurated the reopening of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome with Divulgare, exceptionally large works processed with early digital technologies. The reproduced images combined the dimension of the unconscious with reality filtered through television. Large paintings represented new satellite visions, environmental urgencies, war. As his civic engagement grew further, he produced works supporting of Greenpeace’s campaigns, Acnur and many other associations.
In 1991 he produced the exhibition Estroverso at the Mazzoli Gallery in Modena. The 1993 Venice Biennale, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, offered him a solo room in the section Slittamenti. The following year he participated in the exhibition The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968, organized at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; in 1996 he exhibited in Spain and Latin America with the exhibition Musa ausiliaria, a tribute to television. In the 1990s he was interested by the potential of the Web, and at the same time he turned to photography. He expanded and multiplied the production of serial paintings using television as a commercial medium. In 1997, a year before his sudden passing in his studio, he participated in Minimalia, at Palazzo Querini Dubois in Venice.