Tarcisio Merati

Tarcisio Merati was born in 1934 in Bonate Sopra, near Bergamo. He rebels very soon against his own family life conditions of extreme poverty. He loses his father when he is a little child. His mother remarries with an uncouth man who often beats him. After elementary school and professional training, Tarcisio works first in a bakery then as a bricklayer. When he is 25 years old he goes through a very intense psychiatric collapse: the misery, the frequent quarrels with his family and a job he doesn’t like, all that makes him very vulnerable. In a sort of omnipotence delirious, he reacts choosing a new social role.
In 1959 he is hospitalized for the first time into Bergamo psychiatric hospital and he goes back and forth from the madhouse with diagnosis of “psychosis and mentally handicap”. In 1975 he discovers painting. Merati pictures his own personal alphabet, “uccelletti” (little birds), “macchinette” (little cars), all in a color explosion. He dies in 1995.

Some of his most important exhibition:
“Tarcisio Merati. Opere 1975 – 1991”, solo exhibition, Teatro Sociale, Bergamo, 1993
“Arte necessaria”, Cantieri culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, 1997
“Oltre a Ragione. Le figure, i maestri, le storie dell’arte irregolare”, Bergamo (Italy), 2006
“Beautés insensées. Figures, histoires et maitres de l’art irrégulier”, Monaco, 2007
“Banditi dell’Arte”, Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, 2012
“Tarcisio Merati. Feast of colours”, solo exhibition, Maroncelli 12 gallery, Milan, 2017
“Fall back. New works at Cavin Morris”, Cavin Morris Gallery, New York, 2020

 

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Small car, 1975, 74,5×99 cm, tempera on paper

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Small car, 1975, 75×100 cm, tempera on paper

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Untitled, 74×99,7 cm, tempera on paper

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Small plane, 75,5×100 cm, acrylic on paper

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Untitled, 75,7×100 cm, tempera on paper

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Untitled, 75×99,7 cm, tempera on paper

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Coccò cactus, 72,5×99 cm, tempera on paper

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Turbine letter, 1975, 74,5×99,3 cm, tempera on paper

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