Mario Comensoli

Swiss artist with Italian origin, he is considered as a great exponent of the pictorial realism. He lived a hard childhood in the suburbs of Lugano, releasing himself through art: he was a talented and self-taught boy, therefore he won a scholarship thanks to which he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule and the ETH in Zurich. After the academic career, before moving to Zurich, he made several trips to Paris where he met many great artists, fascinated from the poetic of cubism. In the Helvetic metropolis, he developed his personal artistic journey that had its roots in the social reality. His favorite subjects were the immigrants from southern Italy, the outsiders and the seventies and eighties’ youth: people outside the box, observed with curiosity and empathy by the painter.

A few years before his death, Comensoli received a tribute to his art with a major exhibition at the Kunsthaus of Zurich. After his death, cities like Lugano, Milano, Bologna, Losanna and Locarno organized prestigious retrospectives.