Mario Francesconi biography

- MARIO FRANCESCONI PAINTER

 

Mario Francesconi is an Italian painter and sculptor. He was born in Viareggio in 1934.

In 1955 he was called to Rome to perform military service in the Air Force. In Rome he met Leonida Rapaci who introduced him to the Roman artistic environment where he came into contact with the exponents of the Roman School and met the painter Mario Marcucci.

In 1959 Mario Francesconi held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria d’arte La Navicella in Viareggio, where he would also exhibit in 1960 and 1964 concurrently with the Premio Letterario Viareggio, which was for him an occasion for important encounters from Neruda to Longhi, from Pasolini to Buzzati, from Carlo Bo to Mino Maccari.

After a short stay in Paris, between 1960 and 1962 he moved to Rome and began frequenting the art galleries La Salita, La Tartaruga, and San Luca.

The seventies saw him engaged in a series of national and international exhibitions, from Milan to Tokyo, from Basel to Vienna, from Salerno to Frankfurt. Equally numerous were the study trips from 1977 to 1981 between Paris, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam, during which he came into contact with artists such as Wifredo Lam, Hans Hartung, and Henry Moore. In 1985 he returned to exhibit at the Pananti Gallery in Florence the exhibition entitled Architecture.

In 1992, at a contemporary art fair at Fortezza da Basso, he exhibited a significant series of works dedicated to the dog Tobia, from which Manlio Cancogni wrote a story published by Pananti.

Between 1998 and 1999 he worked almost exclusively on a pictorial cycle, consisting of nine paintings divided into three triptychs dedicated to the themes of Mystery, Life, and Death commissioned for the antirefectory of the Vallombrosa abbey.

Since 1989 he has definitively established his studio in Florence where he still lives and works.