Mario Vespasiani (1978) is an Italian visual artist.

He held his first exhibition before turning twenty and has since exhibited throughout Italy, in galleries, museums, places of worship, and unusual settings. Over time, his work has attracted the interest of scholars from various disciplines, ranging from theology to astrophysics, anthropology to philosophy. Vespasiani expresses himself through a symbolic alphabet rooted in the revelations of Christian mysticism and the alchemical practice of painting. As a keen observer of natural laws and the teachings of Eastern wisdom, his work is seen as a continuation of the universal creative endeavor, aiming to capture spiritual sentiment.

At a young age, he exhibited at the Capitoline Museums in Rome with the exhibition “Gemine Muse.” At 27, he won the first Pagine Bianche d’Autore Prize and was featured in Roberto Gramiccia’s book “Fragili eroi,” which covers Italian artists from Futurism to the present day, as well as in the “Dictionary of Italian Art” published by Giancarlo Politi. Being among the first artists to incorporate his painting style into new materials and recent technologies, he was invited in 2012 by the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata to give a lecture titled: “The Essence and the Gift. Art, Relationship, and Sharing, from Canvas to iPad.” In the same year, with works created using the iPad and applied to aluminum, he participated in the Termoli Prize and subsequently in historic national art exhibitions: the Sulmona Prize in 2014, the Vasto Prize in 2015, and the Marche Prize in 2018.

Throughout his career, his works have been directly compared with those of Italian masters such as Mario Schifano, Osvaldo Licini, Lorenzo Lotto, and Mario Giacomelli in exhibitions titled “The Fourth Dimension.” In 2011, he exhibited at the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale curated by Vittorio Sgarbi in the Turin venue and with Imago Mundi at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation. Since 2013, he has been working on “Mara as Muse,” a project comprising paintings, drawings, photographs, books, and art objects that explore the influence of female presence in artistic inspiration. The trilogy of this project was presented in late 2017 at the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

In 2015, he created works in pure silk titled “Stories of Travelers, Territories, and Flags,” which he displayed as banners. This performance took place at the Civic Art Gallery of Ascoli Piceno and during an event atop an ancient tower. In May, his first book entirely dedicated to his writings, “Planet Aurum,” was published. In the same year, the city of Fermo invited him to paint the “Palio dell’Assunta” linked to his solo exhibition “Empireo.” In 2016, he founded the festival on contemporary thought “La Sibilla e i Nuovi Visionari.”

In 2017, his work was exhibited in Venice and Munich in the group show “Our Place in Space,” promoted by NASA and ESA, which continued in 2018 on a worldwide tour. That same year, he organized “Indipendenti, Ribelli e Mistici,” a series of intercultural meetings involving numerous scholars from various fields. Also in 2017, the Historical Museum of the Air Force in Vigna di Valle celebrated its 40th anniversary with his solo exhibition “Fly Sky and Air.”

In 2018, he inaugurated the exhibition “Lepanto,” dedicated to the famous battle, at the Diocesan Museum of Gaeta, where the fleet’s banner is preserved. In May 2019, the 40th book dedicated to his work was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO). His exhibition “Underworld,” dedicated to the theme of the unconscious seen through the metaphor of sea creatures, concluded in September, while his solo exhibition titled “The Time of the Thirty-Six Righteous” is ongoing at Villa Caldogno in the province of Vicenza.