Mario Arlati

Mario Arlati was born in Milan in 1947. After some years of erratic studies, his artistic formation matured at the School of Art in Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Following his artistic inclination, his first works were in a purely figurative style, but in the 1970s he discovered his true dimension in Ibiza, the smallest of the Balearic Islands. 

Since then, Mario Arlati has been living and working in Ibiza many months of the year and his painting bears clear witness to this artistic transformation. From figurative works he has moved onto a more informal materic style, following in the footsteps of the Spanish school of art. Arlati's matter is a representation of his intimate soul, made of feelings, emotions, and landscape's evocations. His “Walls" are a representation of the bright, sunny atmosphere of the island of Ibiza, of the symbiosis created between man and nature and the incessant corrosion from sun, wind and sea on the works of man, which gives life to unique, incomparable objects. Painting, according to Arlati, is “matter into which other matter is concealed". 

Matter exists through colour, it is not “beautiful" or “ugly" a priori; matter makes itself beautiful or ugly according to the forms that it takes. The colour is sometimes announced by the titles of the artworks, for instance “Bianco-Rosso-Nero (White-Red-Black)", but it also always assumes symbolic connotations. The colour black recalls fear and the unknown, the colour white the purity of an idea, the blue the finality of a vision and the red blood and violence. Arlati's most recent artistic production is focused on the subject of flags. 

The series “Incomplete flags" was developed from a project supported by the European Union and is an open tribute to the artist Jasper Johns. Arlati strongly emphasises the word incomplete, highlighting the viewer's active role, called by the artist to complete the artwork through their intuition and imagination. In this way, the spectator becomes emancipated, as Jacques Rancière theorised. The use of rags recycled from the dry cleaners and casually painted by the artist's brush, recalls Arlati's poetics, which draws much from arte povera while developing a new and fresh artistic gesture. Venezia: San Marco, 2288 Calle Larga XXII Marzo – Tel. 041.5230357 Fax 041.2443457 Cortina d'Ampezzo (BL): Piazza S. Franceschi, 1 – Tel. 0436.867400 / Cortina d'Ampezzo (BL): Piazza S. Franceschi, 7 – Tel. 0436.867156 www.continiarte.com [email protected] Already well established both in Italy and abroad, in 2014 Arlati is further noticed with his project “Living Art", when he paintsthe facades of the five skyscrapers Pavshino Living Art Towers, designed by Dante O. Benini in Moscow. 

For this same works, he won the Special Price L'Arca International in 2017. In 2018, he inaugurated the exhibition Muri e Stracci: la materia diventa Arte at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. During the same winter, his video-installation Art Light Flags lighted up the tower bell in San Marco; similarly, on the occasion of the Venice Carnival, he inaugurated his video-installation titled Blame the moon, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. In February 2021, Arlati repurposed Art Light Flags by projecting it on the façade of Cristallo, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, Cortina d'Ampezzo, on the occasion of the hotel's 120th anniversary. Mario Arlati continuesto divide his time between Milan and Ibiza. Since 2001, he is exclusively represented by Contini Art Gallery in Venice and Cortina d'Ampezzo.