Italian sculptor Mario Di Teana who notably befriended such artists as Agam, Calder, Jean Arp, Tinguely, Dubuffet, Cesar or, Penalba during his career.died at 91 on January 1st 2012.
Born on 8th August 1920, in Teana, in Basilicat Province, near Potenza in South Italy, Di Teana emigrated at 16 to Argentina as a mason before becoming a construction site manager six years later.
At the same time, he studied in the evening at the Salguero Polytechnic at the Architectural National School before he frequented the Higher National School of Fine Arts Ernesto de la Carcova in Buenos Aires.
After graduating as a professor, Di Teana won the Premio Mittre, equivalent to the European Grand Prix de Rome. He then returned to Europe in 1952 settling in Paris and exhibited his works in 1956 at the Denise René gallery.
From that time, he participated in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad. His works were also shown at many museums, notably in Ixelles (Belgium), Leverkusen, Frankfurt, Munster, Copenhagen or Tome in Japan. And also showed his works at the Stendhal gallery in Milan, the Redfern Gallery in London as well as at Claude Bernard and Artcurial galleries in Paris
Under contract with the Gallery Michèle Broutta in Paris and the Krings Ernst Gallery in Koln Germany and also punctually with the Dutko or Lahumière galleies in Paris, or Galerie Jonas in Switzerland, Diteano enjoyed several retrospective exhibitions in the 1970s, notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the City of Paris in 1976, the Museum in Pau in 1981, the National Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken in 1987, among others.
He represented Argentina at the Biennale of Venice in 1982, and France at the International Symposium of the Arts and the Sciences of Seoul ( Korea) in 1997.
Many of his works were acquired for public collections, in particular the Museum of Contemporary Art of the City of Paris, the George Pompidou Center, The New Contemporary Art Museum MACVAL, several French FRACs (National Contemporary Art Fund) as well as for renown private collections such as the L'OREAL company, Claude Pompidou, Francois Pinault or Pierre Bergé, The Marcel Joray collection in Switzerland or The Thomas Neirynck donation at the King Baudouin Fundation in Belgium.
During his career, Di Teana created more than 50 monumental sculptures as much as 20 metre high (Paris/Fontenay sous Bois, Montpelier, Orléans-Chevilly, the military Canjuers head quarters, Var) his 23 metre-high steel sculpture titled “ Liberté, homage au Général De Gaulle in Fontenay being one of the largest known in Europe
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