Mario Ceroli (1938)
Italy

"Mario Ceroli was born in Castel Frentano (Chieti) on 17 May 1938.

He moved to Rome at the age of ten where he enrolled at the Art Institute, by mistake or serendipity:

“My father and mother wanted to make me a state employee (…) they enrolled me in the Galileo Galilei School which includes three sections: the Technical Institute, the Industrial Technical Institute and the Art Institute. My mother took me there one morning. She was afraid to take the elevator and we went up on foot. On the first floor there was the Art Institute, mother was tired, she stopped and she enrolled me in that Institute.”
— Mario Ceroli

Ceroli's work is sculpture, painting, drawing, creation of objects, environments and scenography. Ceroli is a multifaceted, mercurial, versatile artist. Complex one might say, like every artist, yes, but with that extraordinary ability to mix every art. It is difficult to separate a sculpture from the pictorial aspect, furnishings from sculpture and images.

A separate biography would deserve to be written for Mario Ceroli's activity with the theatre: here too sculpture and scenography blend together to create majestic stages.

His sculpture is construction rather than moulding, the forms are tangible concepts and never abstractions, they are almost always simple, objective, concrete ideas. In the use of bronze, the resulting idea is of a series of stratifications, of consequential planes, which do not give the work that character of plastic uniformity, even within the context of a harmonious and syntonic work.

Also at the Art Institute he worked under the guidance of Leoncillo Leonardi, Pericle Fazzini and Ettore Colla, where he experimented with the use of ceramics. He held a first exhibition of ceramics in 1958:

“This thing that I am a wood sculptor is not true at all, because I have had various experiences with materials: I have used wood, I have made ceramics, I have used marble, I have created things with ice, with water, I made things out of paper, things out of fabric"
— Mario Ceroli

The 60s: wood, America, ice

Not just a sculptor of materials, Ceroli seems more interested in creating spaces, environments, majestic scenography: in 1965 he began working on Cassa Sistina, a space that contains all objects: everything is transportable, marketable. Irony and mystification of reality make it an exceptional work of art. Cassa Sistina earned him the Gollin Prize. 1966 was a decisive year: Ceroli exhibited at the La Tartaruga Gallery in Rome, among the various works, The Last Supper created a year earlier, and today preserved at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.

From September 1966 to June 1967 Ceroli moved to the United States and in April held a solo exhibition at the Bonino Gallery in New York, where he exhibited Farfalle. Another great masterpiece of those years is China, from 1966, one of the first works in the history of immersive and all-encompassing art, which gave the viewer the impression of almost being part of it.

Spectacularity, plastic spaces, majestic works: in 1969 Ceroli created Io, piramide di ice: a pyramid of ice bricks at the top of which hangs a steel sphere containing burning coal.
The 80s - 90s

Doors that open, doors ajar, stairs, harmonies, recurring elements of Cerolian production.

The 1980s marked the search for the theme of "everything in the round", of spherical materiality, with works that represent a constant dialogue with the environment: La Porta (1981), Il Cenacolo (1981), Uomo Vitruviano (1987) date back to these years. ), House of Neptune (1988), Mistral (1992), Applause (1992).
Mario Ceroli today

The 2000s saw Ceroli engaged in a continuous mix of natural elements, wood and ash, wood, ash and gold foil.

Works such as The Naked Truth and Guerriero Frentano are from 2007: human figures carved in wood and sprinkled with ash, symbolizing the human being who merges with nature. 2007 is also the year that sees the creation of the majestic work Paolo e Francesca, with the reappearance of the theme of the staircase: human figures stand out on a staircase, with piles of colorful colors at their feet.

Today Mario Ceroli lives in Rome with his family."

(Source, artist's website)

Work :

• Riflessione speculare (1970)