Mario Tessari
Mario Tessari is a painter of modern art, portraitist, a fresco painter and a restorer.
“We use art as a mirror of our soul” – says and ” he invites us in the universe of his thoughts, through the richness of the details, from the limpid lines to the transparent brilliances, which manifest all his inwardness. …”
Tomatis 2002 – read more
His painting is ” a painting of imprints, larval and mysterious: faces that emerge from the chaos of a nature that feels the effects of an ancient, fabulous humanistic echo. An artist who amazes for his originality and depth.”
Rizzi 1990 – read more
“In the artworks by Mario Tessari artistic movements and techniques overlap and intertwine in an exploration that, without excluding anything, collects diverse fruits. … However, a continuum can be found in the metaphysical and surrealist painting, where the dream-like and unconscious component is privileged, through images that, originated in the fantasy and escapes an immediate control..”
Mariuz 1984 – read more
“The original dream-like quality unravels for a more perfect identification of the human dimension, underlined through a colorful effect, which rises from the oils, through a more extensive elaboration of the basic monochrome, to the fresco technique. In his painting, a solemn visceral quality emerges from the fusion of the architectural frame of Bosch and the transparence of Brueghel…”
Perniola 1985 – read more
This all is Mario Tessari and here is another surprise “in discovering how many special, different solutions, and never related to reality, things have; and anyway how many still unexplored possibilities humans have to approach things in order to discover the ‘true’ identity”
Il Gazzettino 1983 – read more
Read the biography
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Paul Tomatis, 2002
(translated by Leda Cempellin)
GRAN GALA’ D’ART MODERNE 11TH EDITION, October 2002
Mario Tessari
He invites us in the universe of his thoughts, through the richness of the details, from the limpid lines to the transparent brilliances, which manifest all his inwardness.
This inner life, which liberates us without any regret by leaving us our freedom of interpretation.
This painting also establishes a dialogue with our gaze, so that it is established both a communication and a reflection similar to a conversation between friends.
Paul Tomatis, President
Accademia Europea delle
Arti Grafiche Plastiche e Pittoriche
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Paolo Rizzi, 1990
(translated by Leda Cempellin)
A painting of imprints, larval and mysterious: faces that emerge from the chaos of a nature that feels the effects of an ancient, fabulous humanistic echo. An artist who amazes for his originality and depth.
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Giuseppe Mariuz, 1984
(translated by Leda Cempellin)
In the artworks by Mario Tessari artistic movements and techniques overlap and intertwine in an exploration that, without excluding anything, collects diverse fruits. Starting from the Cézanne-like interpretation of impressionism – the root for so many movements in the XX century – outcomes followed that led to symbolism, futurism, and even the American action painting (a homage paid to Pollock is evident in some of his paintings).
However, a continuum can be found in the metaphysical and surrealist painting, where the dream-like and unconscious component is privileged, through images that, originated in the fantasy and escapes an immediate control. The rational schemes are often turned upside down (it is a choice, since Tessari is also quite talented in academic drawing): the images resulting are sometimes primitive, sometimes very colored, with a disarranged space.
As a confirmation of that, he himself states that “the painter cannot paint but surprises”, and adds “we use art as a mirror of our soul”.
In the most recent works (1984), he insists, through mixed techniques, on painting shapes vaguely stained, reworked and often monochromatic, to which he graphically superimposes his anthropomorphic perceptions: as a game, to interpret transient clouds in the sky.
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Ugo Perniola, 1985
(translated by Leda Cempellin)
Tessari is a prudish painter, far from mysterious pulses, who looks without anxieties and through an ancient profession for a possible “new” in representational art. Indeed, the composed flow of dense energies in his painting gestures is more a nostalgic love for past ages, than instinctive interaction.
The degree of development of his inspiration relies on an outstreched mood, but also on a prominent and morally binding correlation with an illustrious past, where life in its flow makes a sense that has to be translated also in artistic terms.
The incommunicability, abundantly expressed through essential monochromes, is the space of a new epiphany: in the uncertain monster of difference, the unsuspected monster that harbors in us is conceptually revealed.
A “secularly” religious language holds the volume of the message, which expands through time even stylistically as light, forming a continuity that is mental and calligraphic at the same time.
The original dream-like quality unravels for a more perfect identification of the human dimension, underlined through a colorful effect, which rises from the oils, through a more extensive elaboration of the basic monochrome, to the fresco technique. In his painting, a solemn visceral quality emerges from the fusion of the architectural frame of Bosch and the transparence of Brueghel; color, made of several velvet layers, aims to three-dimensionality, not blocked and closed, but with a singularly oxygenated background. The paint material is fresh, almost evanescent, and presents as subject the human being in his double “façade” symbolically sexual (the façade in the history of architecture is the visible and typological part, immediately representing the overall structure of the building which introduces to its interior space). The prevalence of the feminine in the pictorial tangle of Tessari is the emblem of the prevalence of the exterior “façade” over the interior one (the man, intended as situation, as flow, subjected to any form of limitation, but also to solvent hope).
In the painting of Tessari, nothing is left to chance; the same frame, which limits the “façade”, accompanies and concludes the work. His painting is certainly devoted to a happy destiny, for the acute spirit of the research that supports him.
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Il Gazzettino di Pordenone, October 1983
The Surprises of Tessari – Il Gazzettino di Pordenone, October 1983
(translated by Leda Cempellin) “An artist cannot paint but surprises”: this is how Mario Tessari, when speaking about his solo exhibition at “Al Fogher”, introduces himself. Indeed, the work exhibited seems to confirm it. The first surprise is the complexity of his investigation of reality, which translates in a variety of painting gestures, materials, techniques. We are in front of drawings whose noble traits are made by pen, oils on canvas of various dimensions, and even an oil on board with interesting effects of transparence; but also in front of various cultural experiences, which suggest sometimes cubism, sometimes expressionism, some beautiful impressionist traits, but especially a prominent attention to a sort of surrealism.
Here is, maybe, the second surprise: in discovering how many special, diverse and intagible approaches there may be to things; and yet how many still unexplored possibilities humans have to approach things in order to discover the ‘true’ identity, the one that is underneath appearances. It drives us to finally state, by entirely concentrating in this investigative amazement in a relationship of reciprocity, how false is the reality that surrounds us.
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Biography
Mario Tessari, born in Gorizia (Italy) on May 21st, 1956, is a painter of modern art, portraitist, a fresco painter and a restorer.
He attended the Istituto d’Arte in Gorizia, Italy.
He attended a course on figure drawing and seminars on conservative restoration organized by Beni Culturali at the Accademia of Belle Arti in Venice, Italy, during the Academic Year 1982/1983.
From 1984 to 1986: he collaborates at the Museum of Palazzo “Ricchieri” in Pordenone, Italy, as assistant restorer;
In 1987 starts a period in which he will execute decorations, frescoes, restorations and commissioned paintings in his own for private.
“Tessari had a long training initially in technical pictorial aspects. He has attended the Istituto d’Arte and the Accademia, he has worked as restorer and copyist, he has studied the ancient masters for a long time, he has appropriated several technical secrets, from the encaustic to the fresco. In short, he has been able to go back to the roots of the painting profession. Especially in a series of painting (most of them on paper) dating 1984 he has set up his own way to work on the image. It is difficult to list and motivate all the stylistic references. Anyway, they can be summarized in two directions: on one side, the historical phase of Mannerism of the late XVI century, on the other the Surrealism in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Therefore, the most capricious and acrobatic creations of some mannerists especially from the North (from Arcimboldo to Bosch) are welded with the visionary spectrum of the inventions by Max Ernst and Dali’, up to the American followers in the 1940’s (as De Kooning and Gorky).
The frottage technique by Ernst, as much as the illusionism of Cagli’s “papers”, are ferments, far away in time, of a dream-like inspiration, almost alchemic, in which the painting matter is sublimed.”
Rizzi 1989 – read more
“We use art as a mirror of our soul” – says and ” he invites us in the universe of his thoughts, through the richness of the details, from the limpid lines to the transparent brilliances, which manifest all his inwardness. …”
Tomatis 2002 – read more
His painting is ” a painting of imprints, larval and mysterious: faces that emerge from the chaos of a nature that feels the effects of an ancient, fabulous humanistic echo. An artist who amazes for his originality and depth.”
Rizzi 1990 – read more
“In the artworks by Mario Tessari artistic movements and techniques overlap and intertwine in an exploration that, without excluding anything, collects diverse fruits. … However, a continuum can be found in the metaphysical and surrealist painting, where the dream-like and unconscious component is privileged, through images that, originated in the fantasy and escapes an immediate control..”
Mariuz 1984 – read more
“The original dream-like quality unravels for a more perfect identification of the human dimension, underlined through a colorful effect, which rises from the oils, through a more extensive elaboration of the basic monochrome, to the fresco technique. In his painting, a solemn visceral quality emerges from the fusion of the architectural frame of Bosch and the transparence of Brueghel…”
Perniola 1985 – read more
This all is Mario Tessari and here is another surprise “in discovering how many special, different solutions, and never related to reality, things have; and anyway how many still unexplored possibilities humans have to approach things in order to discover the ‘true’ identity”
Il Gazzettino 1983 – read more
He is marred and father of three girls. He currently lives and works in Pordenone, Italy.
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