Fabio Mauri

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Fabio Mauri was born in Rome in 1926 and his activity is extensive: it includes theatre, performance, installation, painting, theory, teaching, as elements of a single expressive place. He worked at Casa Editrice Bompiani in Rome and Milan from 1957 to 1975. In 1979 he was offered the chair of Aesthetics of Experimentation at the Academy of Fine Arts in L’Aquila, whe-re he taught until 1996. He has worked in the ranks of the Italian avant-garde since 1954.His first monochromes and screens date back to 1957. In the 1970s Mauri turned his attention to the ideological component of the linguistic avantgarde. These were the years of Ebrea (1971). He composed his first large performance Che cosa è il fascismo a Roma (1971), which he repeated at the Venice Biennale and in New York. Then Nature and Culture, Obscuration and Wall of Europe at De Appel in Amsterdam. In 1974 he was again invited to the Venice Biennale, where he was also to appear in 1978 with the installation I numeri malefici, in 1993 where he made the Muro Occidentale o del Pianto and in 2013 with the performance Ideologia e Natura of 1973. In 2015 he will be back at the Biennale invited to represent Italy in the Central Pavi-lion. He staged the performance Che cosa è la filosofia. Heidegger and the German Question. Table concert in 1989 for the Centro Multimediale Quarto di S. Giusta, L’Aquila. In 1994 his first retrospective Fabio Mauri Opere e Azioni. 1954-1994 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. In 1996 he presented Le Proiezioni at Moca in Los Angeles, at the Wexner Center for the Arts, (Ohio), at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. A second retrospective was presented in 1997 at the Kunsthalle in Klagenfurt. In 1999 in Minimalia: da Balla a ... at P.S.1 in New York. In 2000 he was present at Novecento. Art and History in Italy, at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. The last retrospective was held in 2003 at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Lille. With the imposing installation Inverosimile in 2007, he took part in the major Emergenze exhi-bition Not Afraid of the Dark in Milan. In 2009 his last work Fabio Mauri etc at the Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice. He died, after a long illness, in May 2009. In 2012 he is present at DOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and at the Palazzo Reale in Milan with the exhibition Fabio Mauri. The End. In 2013 the installation “Warum ein Gedanke einen Raum verpestet?/ Why does a thought intoxicate a room?”(1972) will be presented again at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in: Anni ‘70. Art in Rome. In 2014 the Cima Foundation in New York hosted L’Espressionista (1982), a performance taken from the Gran Serata Futurista 1909-1930 (1980), while the Proa Foundation in Buenos Aires dedicated its first anthological exhibition in South America to the master. In 2015, the Hauser & Wirth Gallery, first in its historic New York headquarters then in London, dedicated two highly successful solo exhibitions to him, representing him in New York in 2018 at its headquarters. In 2016, one of the largest retrospectives dedicated to the artist was held at the MADRE Museum in Naples. In 2019 for the first time ever in Denmark, HEART presents the solo exhibition The End - Fabio Mauri. In 2020 it is at the New Galerie in Paris and in 2021 at the Castello di Rivoli in Espressioni. Proposition and at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and performance. His art is presented in Canada, USA, Austria, Spain, Holland, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, England. He exhibits in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Edinburgh, at the Kulturhaus in Potsdam. His work continues through the Studio Fabio Mauri Association for Art L’Esperimento del Mondo. Mauri has published many essays in magazines and art catalogues. His intense activity is collected in his latest book Io sono un ariano, ed. Volume!/Rome, Lampi di Stampa/Milan.

Links

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Website ︎

Exhibitions

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