A Note About Mario's Art Work
Mario’s career as an artist spanned more than 60 years, beginning after his graduation from the High School of Industrial Arts in 1961 and continuing until his death in 2021. Immediately after graduation Mario took a job with a NYC apartment rental agency, assigned to draw floor plans of apartments. He quit after a week, and lived and worked as a freelance artist from then on. He was never rich, and he never sought fame, but unlike so many artists, he made a living from his art and from his business as a dealer in antiques and jewelry.
Paintings and drawings were Mario’s primary media in the early years of his career. He was an extremely skilled and inspired draughtsman, able to draw a face or a scene quickly and accurately, and to compose a picture in ways that frequently surprised and always delighted. For his drawings he liked to use pencils and markers.
In the 1960s and 1970s he collaborated on several children’s books with Barbara Wersba, and throughout his career he designed posters for performers, theatrical events, and similar ephemeral activities.
Mario’s final works are several hundred drawings which he did after he suffered a disabling stroke in 2020. These are humorous, inventive, colorful, and pleasingly bizarre. Mario said that they just kept coming, but that he didn’t know where the inspiration for them came from. He did most of them at a table in the facility’s cafeteria, using color pencils, plates and utensils to make shapes, and incorporating materials such as hot chocolate or coffee into a drawing to create wash effects. He called these drawings The Confinement Papers, because they were done while he was confined, not only because of his physical condition, but also as a result of the restrictions imposed by Covid. Many of these drawings have been gathered into a book titled “The Confinement Papers.” Mario intended to publish the book and sell it, and to also offer the drawings for sale, but he passed away before any of this could be realized.