Mario Comensoli

Mario Pasquale Comensoli (15 April 1922 – 2 June 1993) was a Swiss painter. He is considered as leading figure of the realist movement, depicting the social evolution of post-World War II Switzerland with key themes ranging from Italian immigrants to the 1968 social unrest, the Disco years and the hopelessness of the 'No Future' youth.

Mario Comensoli was born in Lugano on the 15 April 1922. When his mother died, he was raised by his two sisters in extreme poverty and this sensitised the artist's character and made him aware of the social problems of the poor from the very beginning.

In 1944, the Civic Museum of Fine Arts of Lugano acquired an oil painting after suggestion by Aldo Patocchi. On that same year, thanks to a scholarship, Comensoli went to Zurich where he started attending drawing and history of art lessons at the polytechnic institute.

In Paris, in the early post-war period, he observed Picasso and Léger's work and was quite influenced by their Cubist paintings. In 1948, on his second time in Paris, Miró, the Giacometti brothers and Poliakoff became his new artistic referrals.