Mauro Di Silvestre was born in Rome, Italy in 1968. He has since studied and worked in Los Angeles, Rome, New York, and more. Though creating art is his passion, Di Silvestre has worked in a variety of creative positions. From 2007-8 he was a private art dealer in New York. Having exhibited in numerous international and local galleries and museums, the artist currently works and lives in Rome.
Many theatre productions, television series, and movies feature many paintings of Mauro Di Silvestre. On top of these features, the artist was chosen by Steve McCurry to showcase his works and studio in an internationally screened Huawei commercial. The artist regularly talks about his works in both Italian and international art institutions as a guest. These include the Accademia delle Belle Arti of Tome and Frosinone, and Cornell. Recently, Luiss and Temple University are organizing a program of artist visits to his studio in Rome.
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Each of Di Silvetre’s pieces demonstrates the dedication and care that he puts into his art. His style is highly emotive, drawing on notions of memory, time, life and death. The paintings created by the artist are intriguing and strange. Often depicting anthropomorphic figures that sits rather comfortably on the boundary between the human and inhuman, the human and the animal. Placed against colourful, vibrant, and often disorienting backgrounds, these figures sometimes stand out as a point of clarity for the viewer. Sometimes, these figures merges with the illusive backdrop they are set against, beckoning the viewer to solve visual puzzle set in front of them.
He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions over the span of his career, including but not restricted to: Nel Fondo Del Tempo, double solo show (with Francesco Cervelli), Mucciaccia Contemporary Gallery (2017); Please, solo show, Galerie L&C Tirelli, Vevey (2016); Io non ho paura, z2o Gallery, Rome (2015); and Sedia Sediola, Gallery Cellamare Int. 56, Naples (2013). Since his first solo show in 2007, Di Silvestre has exhibited widely and internationally, growing into the artist he is today. In 2001, he was awarded the 2nd prize in the City of Lissone Award (MI), and in 2004 won the prize for the Emerging Painters category of the Celeste Prize.
Di Silvestre’s creative process consists of seizing the significant moments in his life and impressing them onto paper or canvas. His canvas is something like the page of a diary, becoming a space in which Di Silvestre can paint the experiences of his everyday life. Some of his earliest works are inspired by photographs from his family albums; birthday parties, his family at the beach, and days spent in the garden, are transformed into magical and sentimental artworks.
As Di Silvestre began to develop his style, he explored myths, histories, superstitions, religions, fairy tales, astronomy, and natural history. Despite this wider exploration, his love of intimate storytelling remained – soon, Di Silvestre discovered that many of his interests were linked by the same two strands: time and memory. In his latest works, Di Silvestre paints early images of himself and his family through a nostalgic lens, considering how things have remained the same and how they have changed. His paintings display his own struggle with human representation, and his attempts at portraying something as large as life on something as small as a canvas. Di Silvestre’s work dwells on vast questions about life and death, but often does so in a playful manner. Through the use of bright colours and heavy irony, Di Silvestre disguises his central message in a cloak of fun. It is up to the viewer, therefore, to discover the darker meanings within his works.
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