Life

Born in Rome on 1 April 1926, Fabio Mauri took his first steps in the art world in the early 1950s, making his debut in ’54 with an exhibition at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice, followed a year later by a solo show at the Aureliana in Rome. Mauri exhibited drawings on paper and oil paintings characterized by Expressionist and Fauvesque colourism. In the exhibition introduction, Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote: “In Mauri, we may see a willingness for overhanging subject matter; we may see the idea that expressionism lies where the object emerges from the picture.”

In 1957, the artist made his first Schermo. All subsequent artistic research was grafted onto this germinal work. Tracing a black frame around a white sheet of paper, or stretching paper or cloth over a wooden frame reminiscent of the shape of a television set, Mauri marked out a field for projection, a surface potentially capable of accommodating any image, past or future, transcending pictorial representation and ushering in a new medium.

In Rome, Mauri combined his visual arts output with the role of theatre director, as well as working at his uncle Valentino Bompiani’s publishing house, where he was artistic director of the Almanacco Letterario, the “Sipario” magazine, and advised on books and covers. He frequented artists and intellectuals in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo artistic milieu, worked on TV programs, wrote songs for singer Laura Betti, and was close to the Gruppo 63 poets, working with some of them to found the “Quindici” magazine (1967-1969). In the 1960s, Mauri exhibited works at Gian Tomaso Liverani’s La Salita, Plinio De Martiis’ La Tartaruga, Mara Coccia’s Arco D’Alibert, and Nancy Marotta’s Mana Art Market galleries. Emilio Villa, Pierre Restany, Gillo Dorfles, Tommaso Trini, Cesare Vivaldi, Maurizio Calvesi, and Achille Bonito Oliva all wrote about him. In 1960, Mauri founded the Crack group with Pietro Cascella, Piero Dorazio, Gino Marotta, Gastone Novelli, Achille Perilli, Mimmo Rotella, Giulio Turcato, and critic Cesare Vivaldi. In 1964, he staged L’Isola, a pop-art theatre play conceived as a collage of literature, theatre, and comic books.

Mauri’s focus on the mass media and direct use of consumer society images led to him being identified with artists from the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo, with whom he shared a personal quest spanning Nouveau Realisme and American Pop Art. However, at the precise moment Pop Art broke through – at the 1964 Venice Biennale – Mauri distanced himself from the movement, shifting focus to ever-more ideologically-driven research.

Fabio Mauri in via dell’Oca, Rome 1956 ca.

Fabio Mauri, Rome 1960 ca.

Photo: Mario Schifano

Alberto Moravia reading the "Almanacco letterario Bompiani" together with Fabio Mauri. Rome 1960

Laura Betti, Elisabetta Catalano, Fabio Mauri, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia. Rome 1960 ca.

Photo: © Durazzi

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fabio Mauri and Umberto Orsini at Caffè Rosati, Rome 1960

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"Crack" group: Mimmo Rotella, Achille Perilli, Fabio Mauri, Gino Marotta, Piero Dorazio, Giulio Turcato, and Gastone Novelli at Caffè Rosati. Rome 1960

Photo: ©Virginia Dortch Dorazio

Fabio Mauri in the Triennale di Milano, 1964

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Fabio Mauri in his installation "Foto di cinema come affresco" at the Triennale di Milano, 1964

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Fabio Mauri with his "screens" dedicated to Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe, 1964 ca.

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Fabio Mauri in his installation "Luna" [Moon], Rome 1970

Photo: Giuliani

"L’Isola" [The Island], theatrical comedy by Fabio Mauri in Teatro Eliseo, Rome 1966

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"L’Isola" [The Island], theatrical comedy by Fabio Mauri in Teatro Eliseo, Rome 1966

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"L’Isola" [The Island], theatrical comedy by Fabio Mauri in Teatro Eliseo, Rome 1966

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Fabio Mauri with his "Cinema a Luce solida" at the Mana Art Market Gallery, Rome 1968

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Fabio Mauri in the exhibition "Cinema a Luce solida" in Galleria de Niebourg, Milan 1969

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Studio d’Arte Toninelli, opening of the Fabio Mauri's solo show, Rome 1969

Photo: Claudio Abate

Studio d’Arte Toninelli, opening of the Fabio Mauri's solo show, Rome 1969

Photo: Claudio Abate

Fabio Mauri, Giuseppe Chiari, Umberto Silva, Alberto Boatto, Germano Celant at the opening of "Brunelleschi e noi", Florence 1977

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

Elisabetta Catalano photographing the artists of the exhibition "Amore mio", Montepulciano 1970

Photo: Claudio Abate

Mauri’s first works on this theme were his 1971 performance Che cosa è il fascismo, followed a few months later by his installation/performance Ebrea, in which Mauri cast light on what the Italian economic boom had concealed: the horrors of Nazi-fascist ideology. Mauri had suffered severe psychological trauma in his youth, when he became aware of the violence the regime was perpetrating. Between the last year of the war and the early 1950s, he entered a long period of personal crisis and loss of faith. The young artist was hospitalized at the Ville Turro asylum hospital in Milan, in a ward militarily set aside for electroshock treatment, and then at a Swiss clinic at Prangins, near Geneva. “Electroshock interrupted the obsessive circuit of thought that had no chinks in its armour, a polished sequence with no way out at all. Round and round it went, sharp and uncompromising, always the same. It filled up my head. I could not do without this fierce, tight, logical but soft chain, to which I was blindly attached. My assaulted self was torn apart on sight,” the artist later recalled. During this period, he was shuttled between psychiatric treatment and periods of retreat and silence at monasteries and other institutions: “I firmly believe I was a seriously ill person and, at the same time, seriously, a mystic. The two of them do manifest similarities.”

The artist made some of his most significant works in the 1970s: the Ideologia e Natura (1973) performance, exhibition-installation Warum eine Gedanke einen Raum verpestet? (1972), artist’s books Linguaggio è Guerra (1975), Manipolazione di Cultura (1976), the multiple Vomitare sulla Grecia (1972), actions Oscuramento (1975), Dramophone (1976), installation I numeri malefici (1978) exhibited at the 1978 Venice Biennale, Insomnia per due forme contrarie di universo (1978) as part of his collaboration with the Uffici per l'Immaginazione Preventiva, and Muro d’Europa (1979), exhibited at the De Appel Gallery in Amsterdam.

After briefly marrying actress Adriana Asti, Mauri became romantically involved with photographer Elisabetta Catalano, with whom he worked side by side to construct images that would become true icons of his most important performances.

In the wake of his historic Intellettuale (1975) performance, at which Mauri projected The Gospel According to St. Matthew onto Pier Paolo Pasolini’s chest, the artist created a series of installations at which he projected film works onto bodies and objects: the whole world was a screen, the ray of light transmitting its own forms of thought onto non-neutral surfaces that, in intercepting the signal, modified the meaning of the object and engendered new meanings.

In the 1980s, Mauri began a twenty-year teaching career at the L’Aquila Academy of Fine Arts. A passionate teacher, Mauri taught the Aesthetics of Experimentation, flanking theoretical lectures with intense workshopping. The artist and his students put together the performances Gran Serata Futurista 1909-1930 (1980), Che cosa è la filosofia. Heidegger e la questione tedesca. Concerto da tavolo (1989), and re-enacted Che cosa è il fascismo. During these years, Mauri pioneered the practice of lecture-performances: face-to-face lectures with performative moments dropped into the spoken discourse as linguistic acts that helped generate meaning.

In 1993, invited to re-present his Ebrea installation/performance at the LV Venice Biennale, Mauri built Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto, a monumental work composed of old bags and suitcases, an emblem of this divided world, of exile, of so many people forced to flee, “forced to expatriate, finding or taking along incinerated or sundered identities.”

Overseen by Augusta Monferini and curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marcella Cossu, the Rome Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea dedicated a major retrospective exhibition to Mauri in 1994.

In 1996, Mauri ceased teaching, but retained a group of students who continued to work as his assistants, building works and installations. In 2000, he founded the Studio Fabio Mauri – Associazione per l’Arte L’Esperimento del Mondo, to produce and conserve his works and archive.
Fabio Mauri worked with his assistants until the final days of his life, supported by his partner Piera Leonetti and his brother Achille. He succumbed to a tumour on 19 May 2009, days before his Etc. exhibition opened at the Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice.

Mauri’s works have been exhibited at prestigious international venues including MoMA PS1 in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MOCA in Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Civic Center Museum, Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume and Le Bal in Paris, “La Caixa” in Barcelona, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, MAMAC in Nice, and Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires.

Since 1994, major retrospectives on his work have been staged at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, the Kunsthalle in Klagenfurt, the Le Fresnoy Museum in Lille, Palazzo Reale in Milan, the Museo Madre in Naples, the HEART Museum in Herning, the Museo del Novecento in Florence, and in major rooms at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, Punta della Dogana - Pinault Collection in Venice, Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, MAMCO in Geneva, the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea. Mauri exhibited his works in six Venice Biennals (1974, 1978, 1993, 2003, 2013, 2015), in the 14th Instanbul Biennal, and in dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel.

The performance "Che cosa è il fascismo" at Safa Palatino Studios, Rome 1971

Photo: Marcella Galassi

Fabio Mauri e Pier Paolo Pasolini at the rehearsals of "Che cosa è il fascismo", Rome 1971

Photo: Marcella Galassi

Peggy Guggenheim at the opening of "Ebrea" in Galleria Barozzi, Venice 1971

Fabio Mauri hugs Achille Bonito Oliva at the opening of "Warum ein Gedanke einen Raum verpestet?" in Galleria Seconda Scala, Rome 1972

Photo: Claudio Abate

Fabio Mauri with Joseph Beuys at the "Incontri internazionali d’arte", Rome 1973

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"Intellettuale", projection onto Miklós Jancsó in "Oscuramento", Rome 1975

Photo: © Massimo Piersanti

"Intellettuale. ll Vangelo secondo Matteo di/su Pier Paolo Pasolini", Modern Art Gallery, Bologna 1975

Photo: Antonio Masotti

"Senza ideologia", 1975: "La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d’Arc" by Marc de Gastyne onto a woman's chest. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1997.

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"Fermata d’autobus", Spazio Flaminio ATAC, Rome 1995

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"Dramophone", second station of the performance, Galleria Cannaviello, Rome 1976

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"Dramophone", firt station of the performance, Galleria Cannaviello, Rome 1976

Photo: © Elisabetta Catalano

"Muro d’Europa / L’Automobile", Galleria del Falconiere, Falconara 1979

Fabio Mauri interviewed about "I numeri malefici", Biennale di Venezia 1978

Alberto Boatto's talk for the Mauri's installation "I numeri malefici", Biennale di Venezia 1978

Emilio Vedova's talk for the Mauri's installation "I numeri malefici," Biennale di Venezia 1978

"Gran Serata Futurista 1909-1930" [Futurist Grand Soirée 1909-1930], Teatro Stabile, L’Aquila 1980

"Ricostruzione della memoria a percezione spenta" [RECONSTRUCTION OF THE MEMORY WITH PERCEPTION OFF], Villa Pignatelli, Naples 1988

Fabio Mauri in front of the installation "Il muro occidentale o del pianto", Biennale di Venezia, 1993

"Il muro occidentale o del pianto" [The Western Wall or the Wailing Wall], 1993

Photo: Graziano Arici

Kunsthalle Klagenfurt, exhibition view of "Male e bellezza / Das Böse und das Schöne", Klagenfurt 1997

Photo: Claudio Abate

Kunsthalle Klagenfurt, exhibition view of "Male e bellezza / Das Böse und das Schöne", Klagenfurt 1997

Photo: Claudio Abate

Fabio Mauri in front of his installation for "Minimalia", PS1, New York 1999

"L’Universo d’uso" [The Universe of Use], Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome 2008

Photo: Sandro Mele

La Biennale di Venezia, Central Pavillion of the Giardini. Artworks by Fabio Mauri, Venice 2015

Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich

dOCUMENTA (13), exhibition view of Fabio Mauri's room, Kassel 2012

Photo: Claudio Abate

"Etc.", engraving on plastered concrete, 2009