Mario Comensoli Biography
Mario Comensoli (1922 – 1993) was a Swiss artist of Italian origin, considered a great exponent of pictorial realism. He had lived a difficult childhood on the outskirts of Lugano, redeeming himself through art. He was a talented and self-taught boy; He then won a scholarship thanks to which he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule and the ETH in Zurich. After his academic period, before moving to Zurich, he made several trips to Paris between 1946 and 1949 where he met many great artists such as Giacometti and Joan Mirò and remained fascinated by the poetics of Cubism. In 1953 the Helmhaus museum in Zurich dedicated his first solo exhibition to him, followed by exhibitions in Germany, Italy and Switzerland; for example in 1974 at the Civic Museum of Lugano and at the end of the 1980s his paintings were exhibited for the last time at the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich. In the Swiss metropolis he develops his personal artistic path which has its roots in social reality. His favorite subjects were immigrants from southern Italy, outsiders and young people of the Seventies and Eighties: people outside the box, observed with curiosity and empathy by the painter. A few years before his death, Comensoli received a tribute to his art: a major exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. After his death, cities such as Lugano, Milan, Bologna, Lausanne and Locarno organized prestigious retrospectives.
