FABIO MAURI

Rome, 1926



On the occasion of the centenary of Fabio Mauri’s birth, Galleria Michela Rizzo is delighted to present L’Esperimento del Tempo, a solo exhibition curated by Ivan Barlafante, which opens to the public on Wednesday 6 May from 5 pm to 10 pm at the gallery’s Palazzo Palumbo Fossati venue in Venice.

“Eternal life is not long; it is a timeless instant.” With these words, quoted by his friend Giacomo Marramao in L’Esperimento del Mondo, begins the reflection on Fabio Mauri, at the heart of the exhibition L’Esperimento del Tempo.

The exhibition explores the intersection between time and eternity, dimensions that run through the artist’s entire body of work. Mauri’s work stems from a constant tension between historical experience and metaphysical inquiry: having lived through fascism and Nazism, coupled with a profound reflection on the absolute, leads the artist

to a radical analysis of reality and its modes of representation.

“I know what art is; ask me what art is, and I do not know,” writes Mauri, paraphrasing Saint Augustine. This apparent contradiction encapsulates a vision in which time is concentrated in the present, the only possible locus of existence.

The exhibition brings together around 80 works, spanning the artist’s entire career: from Schermo-Disegno / Orizzontale-Verticale (1957) to Etc., created for his final solo exhibition, which opened posthumously in 2009 in the gallery’s own premises.

Through this journey, it becomes clear how the relationship with history, with reality and with the sacred is inscribed within a complex temporality, in which past, present and eternity coexist.

A time — Mauri’s time — outside of time.

Fabio Mauri was born in Rome in 1926. His activity was vast and multifaceted, encompassing theater, performance, installation, painting, theory, and teaching, conceived as elements of a single expressive field.

From 1957 to 1975 he worked at the publishing house Bompiani in Rome. In 1979 he was appointed Professor of Aesthetics of Experimentation at the Academy of Fine Arts in L’Aquila, where he taught until 2001.

Active within the Italian avant-garde since 1954, his first monochromes and Schermi date back to 1957. In the 1970s Mauri turned his attention to the ideological component of avant-garde language. These are the years of Ebrea (1971). He created his first major performance, Che cosa è il fascismo (What is Fascism) in Rome (1971), followed by Natura e Cultura, Oscuramento, and Muro d’Europa at De Appel in Amsterdam. In 1975 he presented the performance Intellettuale on the occasion of the inauguration of the new Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, with the participation of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mauri’s close friend.

He was invited again to the Venice Biennale in 1974, returning in 1978 with the installation I numeri malefici, in 1993 with Muro Occidentale o del Pianto (Western Wall or Wailing Wall), and in 2013 with the performance Ideologia e Natura(1973). In 2015 he was once more at the Biennale, invited to represent Italy in the Central Pavilion.

In 1989 he staged the performance Che cosa è la filosofia. Heidegger e la questione tedesca. Concerto da tavolo at the Centro Multimediale Quarto di S. Giusta in L’Aquila. His first retrospective, Fabio Mauri. Opere e Azioni 1954–1994, was held in 1994 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. In 1997 he presented Le Proiezioni at MOCA in Los Angeles, at the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, Ohio), at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.

A second retrospective was shown in 1997 at the Kunsthalle in Klagenfurt. In 1999 he was included in Minimalia. Da Giacomo Balla a… at P.S.1 in New York. In 2000 he participated in Novecento. Arte e Storia in Italia at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome.

His last retrospective was staged in 2003 at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Lille. With the large-scale installation Inverosimile in 2007, he took part in the major exhibition Not Afraid of the Dark | Emergenze in Milan. In 2009, his last work Fabio Mauri, etc. was presented at the Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice. He died after a long illness in May 2009.

In 2012 his work was included in dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel and at the Palazzo Reale in Milan in the exhibition Fabio Mauri. THE END. In 2013, his installation Warum ein Gedanke einen Raum verpestet? / Why Does a Thought Poison a Room? (1972) was presented again at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Anni ‘70. Arte a Roma. In 2014, the CIMA Foundation in New York hosted L’Espressionista (1982), a performance derived from Gran Serata Futurista 1909–1930(1980), while Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires dedicated his first major solo exhibition in South America.

In 2015, Hauser & Wirth dedicated two major solo shows to him, first at its historic New York venue and later in London, reprising his work in New York again in 2018. In 2016, the Museo MADRE in Naples staged one of the largest retrospectives dedicated to the artist. In 2023, two important solo exhibitions were held: FABIO MAURI. Amore Mio at Hauser & Wirth (Zurich) and the ongoing Fabio Mauri. Esperimenti nella verifica del Male at the Castello di Rivoli (Turin).

His work has been shown in Canada, the USA, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, and England, with exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Edinburgh, and at the Kulturhaus in Potsdam.

His activity continues through the Studio Fabio Mauri, Associazione per l’Arte L’Esperimento del Mondo. Mauri published many essays in art journals and catalogues. His intense intellectual activity is gathered in his last book Io sono un ariano (I Am an Aryan), published by Volume! (Rome) and Lampi di Stampa (Milan).