Mauro Staccioli

He graduated from the State Art Institute of Volterra in 1954. His artistic activity, which began in the early 1960s, has always been firmly intertwined with his teaching and that of a militant intellectual, committed to analyzing the problematic connection between art and society. Starting from painting and engraving, since 1968 he has concentrated on sculpture, arriving at formulating his personal environmental conception of the work, called to interact with the physical space for which it is intended, and for which it was designed, as demonstrated by the large iron and then concrete installations built during the 1970s.

The 1980s saw Staccioli’s consecration as an artist of international standing. After the creation of a large concrete installation in the park of the collector Giuliano Gori in Celle (Pistoia), his works begin to arouse growing attention abroad too: first in Germany (Stadtische Galerie, Regensburg), then in Great Britain ( Hayward Gallery, London), in Israel (Tel Hai College, Tel Hai), in France (ELAC, Lyon) and in the United States (Amherst, Massachusetts, University Gallery).

The large installations created in these places inaugurate a new phase of Staccioli’s artistic research, which tends to mitigate the aggressiveness of his debut, moving towards a more daring design concept, aimed at challenging the static balances of the work and the architectural or natural harmonies of the context. Between the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s the artist worked more and more abroad, staying for long periods especially in California and South Korea. In 1987 the Museum of Contemporary Arts in La Jolla, San Diego, dedicates his first American solo exhibition to him. Also in 1987, the Municipality of Milan dedicated the first important Italian solo exhibition to him at the Rotonda della Besana.

In the 1990s the artist continued to experiment with new forms: among his most significant creations were two large sculptures for the renovated Contemporary Art Museum in San Diego (1996) and the famous Suspended Equilibrium at the Rond Point de l’Europe in Brussels (1998 ). In the first decade of the 21st century, numerous large installations were created, both in Italy and abroad. The large exhibition Places of Experience, inaugurated in Volterra in September 2009, received a medal of recognition from the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano. The monumental Pyramid – 38th parallel (about 30 meters high, in Cortèn steel) was inaugurated on 21 March 2010 in the “Fiumara d’Arte” sculpture park in Motta d’Affermo (Messina).

Staccioli was an associate member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-arts de Belgique and National Academic of San Luca.

He passed away in Milan on 1 January 2018.