“Creating the most interesting art possible; an art that enriches the life of those who observe it, both of a visitor who looks at my paintings in a museum, of a collector who looks at a Kostabi at home for a long time, and of a group of students who reflect on one of my murals…”
It is the artist himself who defines with these words the objective of his art that returns images of joy, even if it tells stories of loneliness, confusion and isolation, and that is not limited to painting. Mark Kostabi is not only a painter, but also a writer, composer, pianist and producer. He has not only painted paintings or frescoes, faceless, timeless figures with a universal language that can be all of us and none of us, expressing the fear of man in society, but he has also designed record covers, watches for Swatch, computer accessories.
He has published several books, including “Mark Kostabi: The Early Years” and “Conversations with Mark Kostabi”, produced in Manhattan a cable TV show entitled “Inside Kostabi” and has great success with his music, which he himself performed and performed by orchestras around the world and leading soloists (his CD “I did it Steinway” for solo piano, was released in 1998).
After studying drawing and painting at California State University in Fullerton, in 1982 Kostabi moved to New York and two years later he was already a prominent figure in the East Village Art Movement. He approached European painting and adopted the concept of Renaissance workshops, in which artists, assistants and students collaborated in the creation of a work, and in 1988 he founded his own personal Renaissance workshop, “Kostabi World”, which ignited the imagination of the media for the widespread use of assistants and creative painters. In his American studio there is a large team of collaborators, with whom Kostabi is a leader of ancient Italian art. He elaborates the ideas, which are then passed on, in sketch, to the “factory” so that they are transformed into paintings. “When Giotto was not in Assisi – says the artist – his collaborators proceeded, whose work was controlled by some envoys of the head of the workshop. And again, “It no longer makes sense to distinguish a painting painted by me, directly, or by the workshop. They are equivalent”.
But if in Mark Kostabi’s painting, the suggestions of the past are strong, immediate and indisputable, even if contaminated by Pop Art, there is also the comparison with De Chirico, a beloved author of the young American, during the years of the elaboration of his own style. “The encounter with De Chirico’s works was fundamental. After moving to New York I was among the spectators of a retrospective dedicated to the Master. I really liked the exhibition. I had already invented my own visual language with the faceless figure that, in some way, was reflected in dechirican mannequins. Certainly the exhibition has added something, in me”.
Mark Kostabi has more than 160 solo exhibitions all over the world. His works can be found in the permanent collections of the “Museum of Modern Art”, the “Metropolitan Museum”, the “Brooklin Museum”, the “Corcoran Gallery of Art” and the Museum of Groningen , with obvious tributes to the great Masters of Art. In addition to his significant presence in various American and European television programs, he is regularly called in several countries around the world to give his lessons and many newspapers write about him, “The New York Times”, “People”, “Vogue”.
by Angy Dove