Mario Ceroli biography

Mario Ceroli is an Italian sculptor, painter and set designer. Born in Castel Frentano, in the province of Chieti, on 17 May 1938. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, under the guidance of Leoncillo Leonardi, Pericle Fazzini and Ettore Colla, of which he becomes assistant. He began to be interested in ceramics and in 1958 he won the prize for young sculpture at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna of Rome and exhibited ceramic works at the Galleria San Sebastianello.
From 1957 he began to experiment with the use of wood, which would become his favorite material. In the 1960s, influenced by Pop Art and in particular by the works of Louise Nevelson and Joe Tilson, he began to experiment with the use of materials and forms that would influence everything his subsequent artistic production. In this period, his work focuses on the creation of silhouettes of letters, numbers and various objects, colorless and repeated in series, connected in space or traced in tempera or ink. Only later did he arrive at the large human silhouettes carved in raw wood and sometimes repeated in series which would become the distinctive sign of much of his artistic production. The use of wood as a poor material and, starting from 1970, of rags, paper and other materials connect it with the artistic research of the so-called Arte Povera.
In 1965 he created Cassa Sistina which earned him the Gollin Prize. In 1966 he exhibited at the Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome proposing, among the various works, The Last Supper, created a year earlier, and today preserved at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rome. From September 1966 to June 1967 Mario Ceroli moved to the United States and in April 1967 he held a solo exhibition at the Bonino Gallery in New York , where he exhibited Farfalle . La Cina is from 1966, one of the first works in the history of immersive and all-encompassing art that gave the viewer the impression of almost being part of it. In 1969 Mario Ceroli created the Piramide di Ghiaccio, a pyramid of ice bricks at the top of which hangs a steel sphere containing burning coal. At the same time he began creating sets for theatre, cinema and television.
In 1988 he created the so-called House of Neptune, a wooden container decorated with the silhouette Floating Man, which established the restoration site of the bronze statue of Neptune by Giambologna. From 1990 is the Winged Unicorn, made of wood covered in gold, exhibited at the entrance to the Rai headquarters in Saxa Rubra.
From the mid-1980s he introduced the use of plates of in his works. t12>vetro and creates numerous monumental installations in public spaces, including the Winged Horse of the Rai Center of Saxa Rubra in Rome.
Today Mario Ceroli lives and works in Rome where he has collected over 500 of his works in a 3000 square meter house-museum on the outskirts of Rome. The artist's intention is to open this space to the public also to inspire recent generations of artists.