CARLO MARIA MARIANI

(Italian, 1931-2021)

GIRL IN RED

Gouache on Paper laid down on Archival Card

16½ x 11½ Inches

Signed Upper Right, 'C. Mariani' and

Dated 1959

 

A native of Rome, Carlo Mariani first studied there at the Academy of Fine Arts where he was influenced by the prevailing styles of Hyper-Realism and Conceptualism. In 1994, he moved to New York City where he began to paint figural landscapes in a traditional, neo-classical style. The 1990s brought Mariani wide recognition and numerous honors, as he represented Italy three times at the Venice Biennale. Additionally, in 1998, he received the prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli Award for lifetime achievement in painting.

 

Mariani continues to be best known for his refined and painterly, Renaissance technique. He was a central figure in Rome’s avant-garde in the 1970s and is widely regarded as an influential forerunner of 1980's Postmodernism. He achieved an international reputation, beginning in the early 1980s, for his arcane and, often, controversial paintings steeped in allusions to historicism and, often, implicating the works of Renaissance artists including Leonardo, Raphael and Dürer, as well as those of modernists including Picasso, Brancusi and, particularly, Marcel Duchamp. These multiple and, often, contradictory, allusions can frequently be found inhabiting the same composition. Mariani also employed his formidable academic skills to create classical heads and archetypal figures- androgynous beings with idealized features- inspired by ancient Graeco-Roman painting and sculpture.

 

Mariani regarded these schematic forms as symbols of beauty that existed in constant conflict with the harsh realities of contemporary life. His figures often float freely in an infinite space that the artist referred to as a “cosmic realm”, inspired in part by the ethereal color-fields of Mark Rothko, one of his favorite abstract painters. Despite his retro technique, mythological subjects, and the archaic appearance of his compositions, Mariani insisted his work had little to do with nostalgia and, instead, maintained that it constituted an ironic and acerbic commentary on the contemporary world.

 

Over the course of a long career, Carlo Mariani exhibited widely and with success. His work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Biennale. His works are held in major public and private collections throughout the world, including, in the United States, in the permanent collections of New York's Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Frye Museum and the Kansas City Museum of Contemporary Art among others.

 

Reference:

E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 9, page 216; et al.