MARIO COMENSOLI

MAY 11 – JUNE 16, 2014

«Comensoli was an extraordinary artist, with a personal history out of the ordinary and fascinating. Whenever I admire his canvas, the immediacy and realism of his art astonishes me; actually, one of his first works to enter into the collection, “Ballerini di Tango”, possesses this feature. From that moment on, the collection has grown: portraits, landscapes, nudes and very positive as well as dynamic canvas animated by dancers, players, workers, musicians and young people. Basic elements of a world full of hopes and dreams are what this exhibition wants to underline through his unpublished works».

Patrizia Cattaneo Moresi

THE ARTIST

MARIO COMENSOLI (1922 – 1993)

Swiss artist with Italian origin, he is considered to be a great exponent of the pictorial realism. He had lived a hard childhood in the suburbs of Lugano, redeeming himself through art. He was a talented and self-taught boy; therefore, he won a scholarship thanks to which he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule and the ETH in Zurich. After his academic career period, before moving to Zurich, he made several trips to Paris where he met many great artists and was fascinated by the poetic of cubism. In the Helvetic metropolis, he developed his personal artistic journey that had its roots in the social reality. His favorite subjects were the immigrants from southern Italy, the outsiders and the seventies and eighties’ youth: people outside the box, observed with curiosity and empathy by the painter.
A few years just before his death, Comensoli received a tribute to his art: a major exhibition at the Kunsthaus of Zurich. After his death, cities like Lugano, Milan, Bologna, Lausanne and Locarno organized prestigious retrospectives.

THE EXHIBITION

THE VERNISSAGE

Thanks to the book “The Magical World of Mario,” a fairy tale built on the most important works, the educators told in a playful and constructive way the life of the artist, so that children could discover the original works starting from the illustrated ones.