E. Mariotti Biography
Mario Mariotti (Montespertoli, 21 September 1936 – Florence, 29 March 1997) was an Italian artist. Raised in the popular Santo Spirito neighborhood of Florence, in contact with the artisan workshops that animate it, at the end of the sixties he founded, with some experimental artists, the self-managed space "Zona". Sensitive to political and civil issues, on the occasion of the referendum on divorce (1974) he projected a large "No" on the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. It will not be Mario Mariotti's only urban performance: throughout the eighties and nineties he will animate the squares of Oltrarno and the river with some of the most evocative artistic and cultural operations of the second half of the twentieth century, in which he invites his artist friends to participate , students, residents of the neighborhood. They will be Piazza della Palla, dedicated to the Medici exhibitions (1980) with the famous projections on the Brunelleschi façade of Santo Spirito, Florence (1985), the Polyptych of San Giovanni (1991). At the end of the sixties he conceived the idea of painting on the hands which he concretized with the publication of his first book, Animani (La Nuova Italia, then Fatatrac, 1980) which in 1981 won the "Fiera di Bologna Graphic Award for Children". After the success of the first book, Umani (Fatatrac, 1982), Deceptions (Fatatrac, 1984), Rimani (Fatatrac, 1988), Foul of Hand (Fatatrac, 1990), Giochi di Mano (Fatatrac, 1992) followed. The artistic activity by Mariotti was also a way to reflect on the theme of the city, on the difficulties of uncontrolled growth, on degradation, all these themes always treated by the artist with lightness and irony.
