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Biography
1926
Fabio Mauri 1926 - 1929
Fabio Mauri was born in Rome on 1 April 1926 to Umberto Mauri and Maria Luisa Bompiani. Of his four siblings, Silvana and Ornella were older, Luciano and Achille younger. Umberto Mauri worked as a theatre impresario, until the Apollo Theatre caught fire and he lost his business. He decided to move the whole family to Rimini, where Luciano, who suffered from emphysema, could receive better treatment. Umberto started collaborating with his brother-in-law, Valentino Bompiani, in Milan, who was working with the publisher Arnoldo Mondadori at that time but soon started up his own publishing business. Umberto Mauri became Commercial Director at Mondadori, moving with his family to Milan in 1929.
Biography
1929
Fabio Mauri 1930 - 1938
Umberto Mauri was the first person to import Mickey Mouse (Topolino) and Flash Gordon comic strips to Italy, selling them to Mondadori and Nerbini in the 1930s. As a child, Fabio enjoyed copying and inventing comics: ‘In the winter of 1934, after seeing “Flash Gordon”, I set about creating a comic strip. The first panel was carefully finished, the second one less so, until I filled all the pages of a notepad with a kind of drawing shorthand that conventionally described a story I loved.’
Fabio discovered contemporary art at a very tender age in Milan through his peer Michele Ranchetti, who went on to study church history at the University of Florence. Ranchetti took Fabio to the Barbaroux gallery on Via della Spiga, where he saw works by Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico, Tomea, Tosi and Alberto Savinio. Although still a child, he was deeply affected by the presence of Tosi, Carrà and Tomea, who were at the gallery, as well as by de Chirico’s painting
Hector and Andromache .
Biography
1939
Fabio Mauri 1939 - 1944
In the late 1930s, Umberto Mauri, who in in 1931 had taken over as manager of Messaggerie Italiane – a company that distributed newspapers, books and magazines – relocated the entire family to Bologna. Fabio met Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was a few years older than him, in Bologna at a G.I.L. (Italian Fascist Youth Organisation) club, where young people with literary interests gathered on Saturdays. Fabio also met Francesco Leonetti, Roberto Roversi, Roberto Ardigò, Luciano Serra, Sergio Telmon and Giovanna Benporad at the G.I.L. In that cultural circle, he also encountered Decio Cinti, who had previously served as secretary to Futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti; Cinti introduced Mauri to the paintings of the Futurist avant-garde. The artist later recalled how, during Adolf Hitler’s visit to Florence in 1938, the Bologna G.I.L. team, which included Pasolini, emerged as winners of the youth intellectual competition. The artist later drew on this experience as inspiration for his 1971 performance Che cosa è il fascismo (What Fascism Is). In 1942–43, while still a young lad, Mauri founded the Il Setaccio art and literature magazine with Pasolini.
When Italy’s cities began to be evacuated due to Allied air bombings, Mauri chose not to return to Bologna after the summer. Rather, he lived in Rimini for a few years. Later on, he joined his maternal family, the Bompianis, in Fiesole, where they had relocated their publishing house to an old villa. In the last year of the war, Umberto relocated a part of the Messaggerie company to northern Italy. After finishing high school, Fabio started working for the Bompiani publishing house, illustrating the
Dizionario letterario delle opere e degli autori (Literary Dictionary of Works and Authors).
Artist's writings
1942
Fabio Mauri, “Quantità artistica” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 1, Bologna, November 1942, p. 13
Artist's writings
1942
Fabio Mauri, “Soggetto” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 1, Bologna, November 1942, p. 13
Artist's writings
1942
Fabio Mauri, “Della parola” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 2, Bologna, December 1942, p. 8
Artist's writings
1942
Fabio Mauri, “Collezioni d’arte” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 2, Bologna, December 1942, p. 10
Artist's writings
1942
Fabio Mauri, “Sacra rappresentazione” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 2, Bologna, December 1942, pp. 16–17
Essays
1943
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “A Fabio Mauri – Bologna” , in Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lettere 1940-1954 , edited by Nico Naldini (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), p. 148
Essays
1943
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “A Fabio Mauri – Bologna” , in Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lettere 1940-1954 , edited by Nico Naldini (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 154–155
Artist's writings
1943
Fabio Mauri, “Giorgio De Chirico o della sua apparente poliedricità” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 3, Bologna, January 1943, p. 17
Artist's writings
1943
Fabio Mauri, “Il pubblico o degli intenditori” , in Il Setaccio , Year III, no. 4, Bologna, February 1943, p. 18
Biography
1945
Fabio Mauri 1945 - 1949
In 1945, at the end of the war, Mauri was deeply affected by seeing images of the Buchenwald concentration camp published in Le Ore magazine, some of which resurfaced in his 1971 work, Ebrea (Jewess). Although his family was secular, the artist read the Bible and the Gospels intensively, undergoing a religious and spiritual experience and a deep psychological crisis. Mauri was admitted to psychiatric clinics multiple times, spending long periods at the Carmelite Convent in Milan, the Carthusian Monastery in Pavia and the Certosa del Galluzzo in Florence. He met Father Pierre Riches, Father Giuseppe Riboldi and Father Stefano Bianchi, who founded the Catholic University of Tokyo. In the immediate post-war years, Mauri’s drawings and paintings on paper were of a religious nature. He gifted some of these early drawings to the Order of Father Davide Maria Turoldo, at the Church of St Carlo in Milan. Gentile, a publisher in Florence, used one of Mauri’s drawings for the cover of Julien Benda’s book, Il tradimento dei Chierici (The Betrayal of the Clerics). Mauri contributed other drawings to illustrate Father Turoldo’s volume of poetry, Io non ho mani (I Have no Hands), published by Bompiani.
Monographs
1948
David Maria Turoldo, Io non ho mani (Milan: Bompiani, 1948)
Biography
1949
Fabio Mauri 1949 - 1954
In 1949, on a return trip from Rome to Milan with his parents, Mauri stopped off near Civitavecchia, at the Villaggio del fanciullo community for boys with social integration problems, in Santa Marinella. He decided to stay on, ultimately until 1954, looking after minors aged between twelve and eighteen. At the community, he did a bit of everything, from cleaning to visual-art courses and helping out at the ceramics workshop. He began drawing and painting again: executed in an Expressionist style, his painted works from this period were semi-figurative.
Monographs
Catalogues
1954
Fabio Mauri , exhibition catalogue, Galleria del Cavallino, Venice (Venice, 1954)
Catalogues
1954
Decima Triennale di Milano , exhibition catalogue, Palazzo della Triennale, Milan (Milan, 1954)
Biography
1954
Fabio Mauri 1954 - 1955
In 1954, when Mauri returned to Milan, gallery owner Carlo Cardazzo saw some of his paintings and offered to display them at his Venice gallery, Il Cavallino. After Mauri’s debut solo exhibition, some of his paintings were submitted for that year’s Venice Biennale. In Milan, Mauri started working at Bompiani publishing house again. His oil paintings from this period, such as Cristo e il Gatto (Christ and the Cat), Balcone, folla (Balcony, Crowd) and Cristo e l’hockey (Christ and Hockey), were visionary and Expressionist, using vibrant colours and thick brushstrokes. In 1954, Mauri took a summer trip to Southern Italy with some architect friends. That trip provided inspiration for two encaustic walls he created for the Villaggi del Meridione house at the X Milan Triennial. Subsequently, the Apollinaire gallery in Milan staged a solo exhibition of his paintings. Mauri also showed his works at other exhibitions, including the Milan Biennale at the Palazzo della Permanente in 1955; his first solo show in Rome was at the L’Aureliana gallery, for which his friend Pasolini wrote the catalogue presentation.
Group exhibition
1954
X Triennale di Milano , Palazzo della Triennale, Milan, 28 October – 15 November 1954 (catalogue).
Solo exhibition
1954
Fabio Mauri , Galleria del Cavallino, Venice, 3–12 March 1954 (brochure).
Essays
1954
Tebe, “Fabio Mauri alla galleria del ‘Cavallino’” , in Gazzetta del Veneto , Padua, 17 March 1954
Essays
1954
Giulia Veronesi in Fabio Mauri , exhibition catalogue, Galleria del Cavallino, Venice (Venice, 1954), p. 3
Monographs
Catalogues
1955
Fabio Mauri , exhibition catalogue, Galleria Apollinaire, Milan (Milan, 1955)
Monographs
Catalogues
1955
Fabio Mauri , exhibition catalogue, Galleria Aureliana, Rome (Rome, 1955)
Solo exhibition
1955
Fabio Mauri , Galleria Apollinaire, Milan, 26 February – 10 March 1955 (brochure).
Solo exhibition
1955
Fabio Mauri , Galleria L’Aureliana, Rome, 10–21 June 1955, curated by Pier Paolo Pasolini (brochure).
Group exhibition
1955
XIX Biennale Nazionale di Milano , Palazzo della Permanente, Milan, November–December 1955 (catalogue).
Catalogues
1955
XIX Biennale Nazionale di Milano , exhibition catalogue, Palazzo della Permanente, Milan (Milan, 1955)
Essays
1955
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Personale di Fabio Mauri” , in Fabio Mauri , exhibition catalogue, Galleria Aureliana, Rome (Rome, 1955), p. 21
Group exhibition
1955
IV Premio Nazionale di Pittura “Cesenatico” , Azienda autonoma di soggiorno e turismo di Cesenatico, Cesenatico (Forlì-Cesena), 1955.
Biography
1956
Fabio Mauri 1956
In March, Mauri exhibited a series of small oils on standard-sized paper sheets at the San Babila bookstore and gallery in Milan. Dense with quick and expressive strokes, the works were a great commercial success. Some of them depicted landscapes created with his autograph signature, repeated many times to create the image of the painting.
Mauri met actress Adriana Asti. They married in June. With the proceeds from the sales of the San Babila exhibition, Mauri decided to leave Bompiani and move to Rome with Asti, where the actress preferred to live for work-related reasons, in a house on Via del Babuino. In Rome, Mauri was struck by a book in the window of Gaspero Del Corso’s L’Obelisco gallery, opened to a reproduction of an Alberto Burri
Sacco . On seeing the Burri, Mauri realised that it was possible to use everything that surrounds contemporary man, heralding a new period in his art-making in which he approached reality directly. He decided his work should include all of his oldest and deepest passions: comics, window graphics, new signs from the urban context and cinema.
Solo exhibition
1956
Fabio Mauri. Disegni , Libreria San Babila, Milan, 20 February – 3 March 1956 (brochure).
Biography
1957
Fabio Mauri 1957 - 1959
Between autumn 1957 and 1960, Mauri created numerous drawings and collages on paper, combining the inscription ‘The End’ with cartoon-inspired drawings and paintings of gestural origin. He foreshadowed the use of comics, which was to play a starring role in what became known as Pop art.
In 1958, Mauri began writing for the theatre, drafting
Il Benessere (Wellbeing) with Franco Brusati, and soon after that, L’Isola (The Island), which would be performed later. L’Isola ’s script, sets and costumes reference the world of comics. The play may be regarded as one of the first experimental uses of Pop art in the theatre.
In the spring of 1958, the artist took a trip to South America to present some collections of Italian books on theatre. He visited Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela and Mexico.
In June 1958, the artist separated from Adriana Asti. That summer, he met photographer Elisabetta Catalano, with whom he remained until 1975. The years 1958–1959 were happy ones for the artist, who wrote and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to painting. He moved to 27 Via dell’Oca, in Rome.
Mauri worked as a writer for RAI Television, and returned to work for Bompiani, heading the Rome office. He edited the first volumes of the new
Almanacco Letterario Bompiani , featuring contributions from Gabriella Drudi, Gilio Dorfles, Umberto Eco, Furio Colombo and many others. The first two editions (‘1960’ and ‘1961’), published respectively in 1959 and 1960, featured material by the new Roman and international avant-garde.
Teaming up once more with Pasolini in Rome, Mauri became editorial secretary for the new version of
Officina magazine, which Bompiani published in March–April 1959. The publication caused a scandal, and had to be halted. Around this time, Mauri met Paola Masino, Elsa Morante, Goffredo Parise, Alberto Moravia, Attilio Bertolucci, Ennio Flaiano, Pietro Citati, Elemire Zolla, Enrico Filippini, Antonio Porta and other intellectuals also published by Bompiani.
Towards the end of the 1950s, Mauri met and befriended literary and art critic Cesare Vivaldi, who went on to organise the first (and indeed only) retrospective exhibition of Mauri’s works about ten years later, in 1969, at Studio Toninelli in Rome. Mauri also met Salvatore Scarpitta, Gastone Novelli, Giulio Turcato, Achille Perilli, Carla Accardi, Giosetta Fioroni, Gino Marotta and Mimmo Rotella, as well as Gian Tommaso Liverani, Mario Diacono and Plinio De Martiis; he was friends with art critic Emilio Villa and young critics Pierre Restany and Udo Kultermann. He began to get acquainted with the Roman art world, the so-called School of Piazza del Popolo, in which he played an active part.
Alongside his drawings and collages, Mauri also began making his first
Schermi (Screens). He created these works by stretching wet paper over a rectangular frame, featuring a projecting portion shaped like a curved screen. The first Schermo (1957) was flat; rather than an image, it featured the rectangular shape of a turned-off screen, outlined in black. His second Schermo (1958–59) was already curved at the four corners, and was made of paper stretched over a projecting frame. These works remained in the artist’s studio, seen only by friends and acquaintances, who considered them simply to be unfinished works.
Artist's writings
1958
Fabio Mauri, “Meditazione sui contenuti e i modi interni all’arte contemporanea” , in Avvento , Year II, no. 4, Rome, 1958, pp. 39–41
Solo exhibition
1959
Fabio Mauri , Libreria San Babila, Milan, 21 February – 7 March 1959.
Group exhibition
1959
Seconda Mostra del Piasseo: Artisti americani & italiani , Piasseo, Lerici (La Spezia), opening 30 August 1959.
Essays
1959
“Il benessere” , in Italian Theatre Review – Revue du théâtre italien , Ente italiano per gli scambi teatrali, Rome, 1959, pp. 8–10
Essays
1959
Luigi Squarzina, “Franco Brusati, Fabio Mauri” , in Franco Brusati, Fabio Mauri, Il benessere (Rome: Teatro d’arte italiano, theatre programme, 1959), n.p
Essays
1959
“Nuovi successi italiani” , in Sipario , no. 156, Bompiani, Milan, April 1959, p. 11
Essays
1959
Ghigo de Chiara, “L’amore è un punto d’arrivo” , in Sipario , no. 157, Bompiani, Milan, May 1959, p. 33
Artist's writings
1959
Fabio Mauri, Franco Brusati, “Il benessere” , in Sipario , no. 157, Bompiani, Milan, May 1959, pp. 34–56
Catalogues
1959
Franco Brusati, Fabio Mauri, Il benessere (Rome: Teatro d’arte italiano, theatre programme, 1959)
Theater
1959
Il benessere , Teatro Valle, Rome, 7 March 1959 (brochure).
Catalogues
1960
Crack , exhibition catalogue, Galleria d’Arte Il Canale, Venice, edited by Cesare Vivaldi (Milan: Krachmalnicoff, 1960)
Biography
1960
Fabio Mauri 1960 - 1963
From 1960 to 1963, Mauri made larger Schermi , veiling portions in gauze and adding protruding or painted shapes and emblems characteristic of urban civilisation. He first exhibited these Schermi at the Termoli Prize in the summer of 1960; Emilio Villa also published some 1959 drawing-collages in 1960 in Appia magazine. In 1960, Mauri published a book, Crack , with other artists (Cascella, Dorazio, Marotta, Novelli, Perilli, Rotella, Turcato, as well as Vivaldi). That summer, these artists exhibited together at the Il Canale gallery in Venice, where Mauri presented a small Schermo . At the end of the year, he exhibited another small monochrome Schermo , described as ‘with a pocket’, at the group ‘Opere di piccolo formato’ show at Plinio De Martiis’s La Tartaruga gallery, still at the old Via del Babuino location. Mauri exhibited at various Roman galleries from 1960. He participated in group exhibitions at La Tartaruga, including ‘Tredici pittori a Roma’ (Thirteen Painters in Rome) at the beginning of 1963, the first exhibition at the gallery’s new Piazza del Popolo venue. In 1962 and 1963, Mauri exhibited at nouveau realiste object group shows curated by critic Pierre Restany at the La Salita gallery, which belonged to Gian Tommaso Liverani, and the ‘J’ gallery in Paris. Vivaldi presented a one-man show of large Schermi at the La Salita gallery in 1963.
Around this time, Mauri took part in a number of Gruppo 63 activities with his friend Nanni Balestrini, who was his counterpart at the Feltrinelli publishing house. Umberto Mauri died on 30 April 1963 in Viareggio, en route to Rome. In 1963, Mauri and Catalano moved to Vicolo del Curato in Rome. Shortly afterwards, they moved to Piazza Madama. However, during the move, many of the artist’s works were lost.
Theater
1960
Laura Betti. Giro a vuoto , Teatro Gerolamo, Milan, 27 January 1960 (catalogue).
Group exhibition
1960
Salone d’Estate della Pittura Romana , Galleria San Marco, Rome, August 1960.
Group exhibition
1960
5 Premio Termoli: Mostra nazionale d’arte contemporanea , Castello Svevo, Town Hall, Termoli (Campobasso), 3–28 August 1960 (brochure).
Group exhibition
1960
Crack , Galleria d’Arte Il Canale, Venice, 6–19 August 1960, curated by Cesare Vivaldi (catalogue).
Group exhibition
1960
Ottobre romano di pittura , Palazzo Barberini, Rome, opening 25 October 1960.
Group exhibition
1960
Opere di piccolo formato , Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome, opening 3 December 1960.
Group exhibition
1960
Piccolo Formato , Galleria La Salita, Rome, 30 December 1960.
Essays
1960
Cesare Vivaldi in Crack , exhibition catalogue, Galleria d’Arte Il Canale, Venice, edited by Cesare Vivaldi (Milan: Krachmalnicoff, 1960), pp. 5–17
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Fabio Mauri” , in Crack , exhibition catalogue, Galleria d’Arte Il Canale, Venice, edited by Cesare Vivaldi (Milan: Krachmalnicoff, 1960), pp. 35–42
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Maria il tatuaggio” , in Laura Betti, Giro a vuoto (Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1960), p. 13
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Là, sul parquet” , in Laura Betti, Giro a vuoto (Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1960), p. 35
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Nevrosi” , in Laura Betti, Giro a vuoto (Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1960), p. 37
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Io son’una” , in Laura Betti, Giro a vuoto (Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1960), p. 50
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Giro a vuoto” , in Laura Betti, Giro a vuoto (Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1960), p. 52
Artist's writings
1960
Fabio Mauri, “Una vera signora” , in Laura Betti, Giro a vuoto (Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1960), p. 59
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