Mario De Biasi Biography
Mario De Biasi (Belluno, 2 June 1923 – Milan, 27 May 2013) was an Italian photographer. A multipurpose photographer, after his youth spent in Sois, a few kilometers from Belluno, he moved to Milan; with the magazine Epoca in 1953 he began his career as a photojournalist, which lasted until the eighties. During this thirty years he has carried out reportages from various countries. Among these we remember the one on the Hungarian revolt of 1956, the images of New York in the fifties and portraits such as those of Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren. He exhibited in the exhibition “The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968” and one of his works was used as the official poster of the event. In 1994 his photo Gli italiani si voltano (in which a young Moira Orfei is portrayed from behind) was was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. De Biasi has mainly dealt with cinema, architecture and nature, and has held exhibitions and workshops over the years. He has published several books and received prizes and recognitions (among these, the Saint Vincent Prize for Journalism, in 1982 and, in 2003, the title of Master of Italian Photography, the highest honor of the Italian Federation of Photographic Associations (which, the same year, dedicated a monograph to him). On 7 December 2006, on the proposal of the Councilor for Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi, the Municipality of Milan awarded him its highest honour, the Golden Ambrogino Forma was born - the International Center of Photography in Milan - the exhibition Tales of water and life - Photographs by Mario De Biasi from 1948 to today. He died on 27 May 2013 at the age of 89 in the Milanese clinic where he had been receiving treatment for some time. A few weeks earlier, on the occasion of the 2013 Photoshow in Milan, the Lifetime Achievement Award was dedicated to him for his ability to talk about big events, but also for the sensitivity and delicacy with which he has always approached the small realities he has crossed his path.
