Mario Martinelli

Mario Martinelli was born in Treviso in 1944. He studied Literature at the University of Padova, where he later completed his PhD. in Contemporary Art. At the same time Mario Martinelli also studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. He's teaching Art History.
Martinelli's work as a theorist and as a teacher has always gone hand-in hand with his research as a practising artist. This research has evolved within a very personal theme of inward reflection, beginning in 1969 with his first 'unwoven canvas'. Chequered patterning on a surface, intended as a pure convention, is the unifying and recurring theme of all Martinelli's work, beginning with the 'stessuti' 'unwovens' of the 1970s-1980s to the 'traspareti' which followed, the interplay of light and shadow both on canvass and on the walls of buildings.
Since the early 1990s Martinelli's traspareti have taken on the shape of the shadows that live within them, becoming metaphysical 'pirates', real entities which enjoy the ambiguous status of being both objects and, at the same time, doubles of the spirit, it's the shadows-in-the-net.
He exhibited at the 1992 Biennale in Lausanne and at the 1995 Venice Biennale expositions.
Since then, Mario Martinelli has travelled the wo...

He studied Literature at the University of Padua. He went on to earn a PhD in Contemporary Art History under Professor Umbro Apollonio whose assistant he later became. At the same time Mario Martinelli also studied under Professor Tito at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice,

2013 - Antwerp, Insularte Gallery, "The Persistence of the Shadow"