Piero Marsili, photographed by Pino Mannarino
I was born in Rome on August 1965 and already in my elementary school my artistic destiny appeared; the teacher Raffaele Polillo, in fact, realized that behind my almost indomitable restlessness lay my artistic talent.
Soon, in fact, I received my first tangible recognition at the age of 10 with the UNICEF Prize; I was one of 300 awarded children among 12,000 in the world.
That drawing is still preserved in the Municipality of Rome.
On that occasion I had the honor of knowing, among the members of the jury, celebrities such as Giulietta Masina, the Princess of the Philippines etc.
This exceptional debut then followed a dark period, perhaps due to my age, to which I was certainly unprepared to take note of this artistic reality.
Unfortunately, this period lasted several years in fact even though I followed an artistic didactic course, I graduated in Master of Arts for Decoration and Decoration of the Church; I suffered very much looking for myself.
I was tormented looking for my way, in fact at first I thought it might be the one of the Agonistic Sports and the Graduation.
The year 1987 was that of “awakening”, in which I began to say that my way was really Artistic.
I started to paint, and not just… I was also very attracted to Music, so my dad bought me a piano and I could study it. Today I am Pianist and Composer.
Painting from 1987 to 1991 is an essentially figurative painting of a religious character and the technique used at that time was watercolor; a technique learned by Professor Gianfranco Galante, known Roman painter and decorator.
In 1992 I began exhibiting art with various collective exhibitions in several Roman galleries.
After a period of technical-thematic experimentation, my artistic research was more and more concentrated on the “Defiguration” made with “acrylic” technique that was very appropriate to my language.
The V.V. Gogh monograph, that came into my hands, not by chance, caused a leap of maturity in my pictorial research.
This created a turning point and made me realize that it would just be looking inside me that I would find the status to make important painting that it really expressed what I felt.
Despite this, I found it correct to continue engaging and systematically deepen my pictorial training.
At that time I studied the Abstract Art of Post Van Gogh period (Pollock and Turcato).
But the gaps I felt about my research on Contemporary Painting made me cruel and painful; so that I went back to deepen the Figurative Painting (still life); at that time I approached the acrylic technique.
My ambition to be a son of my time created me a state of emotional anxiety. I felt that I had won all the colours, but I still lacked Black. So to understand and get my hands on the Black, I applied myself to studying and making “Caravaggesque” but contemporary copies, which I would call “Expressionist-Vangoghian” because filtered by love for V.V. Gogh.
My research continued, and after the study of 1960s, Mario Schifano, Conceptual Art, and the Trans-avant-garde, the “Liberation” began: the dawn of my true Painting.
It was 1994 and since then it was the acrylic technique that allowed me to convey the expression of my soul. The palette, that originally was very colourful, and the representative pictorial scene
extremely synthesized over time. Until in 2008, Red, White and Black became the absolute chromatic protagonists of my representation.
The essential pictorial scenes are Expressionist, Surreal and Symbolic. The impact is strongly emotional and sometimes violently powerful.
In 1998 I participated in a Collective Show at “Galleria Navona 42” in Rome with critical text by Ordinary Professor Robertomaria Siena whom I met in 1997, teacher of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
In 1999 I made my first solo exhibition at the “Luigi Montanarini Cultural Association” in Genzano (RM), with critical text of Ordinary Professor Robertomaria Siena, who commented: “Piero Marsili, or the delicacies of the monster”.
