Son of an archaeologist responsible for excavations at Leptis Magna in Libya—where he was born—Mario Schifano (Homs, 1934 – Rome, 1998) began his career after an apprenticeship at the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia. He made his debut in 1960 with a group exhibition at the La Salita Gallery in Rome: Five Roman Painters: Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio, Schifano, Uncini. He immediately attracted critical attention by creating monochromatic paintings that resembled photographic screens, which he would later populate with numbers, letters, road signs, and commercial logos such as those of Esso and Coca-Cola. Shortly after, Schifano held solo exhibitions in Rome, Paris, and Milan and received early recognition, including the Lissone Prize (1961), the Fiorino Prize, and the New Figuration Prize in Florence (1963).

In 1962, he exhibited at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York for the show The New Realists. The following year, he made his first trip to the United States, where he met Frank O’Hara, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. During this period, his works began incorporating references to Italian art history and Futurism. He also painted his first Anemic Landscapes, which were presented at the Venice Biennale in 1964. This was also the period of his first forays into film: black-and-white 16mm short films. That same year, he took part in a group show at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and in 1965 his works were shown at the Biennials of San Marino and São Paulo, as well as at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Between 1966 and 1967, he began several series including Oxygen Oxygen, Allstars, Oasis, and Comrades, Comrades. He collaborated with a psychedelic rock band, Le stelle di Mario Schifano (The Stars of Mario Schifano), producing Italy’s first multimedia live show during one of the band’s debut concerts in December 1967. He also participated in a group show at La Salita Gallery in Rome, where instead of paintings, he projected frames about the Vietnam War. His interest in contemporary history and social engagement led him to a crisis of ideology and identity, during which he declared his intent to abandon painting.

In the 1970s, he began the TV Landscapes series, transferring television images onto canvas using photographic emulsion. Initially, these included frames taken in the U.S., such as heart transplant rooms in Houston, and labs at NASA, Alamogordo, and Los Alamos. Later, he began revisiting images broadcast by RAI and other television networks in painterly form. In creating these works, he used new industrial enamels—brilliant, transparent, and quick-drying—that allowed for a broader and more rapid production. In 1971, he exhibited at Vitality of the Negative in Italian Art 1960–70 and simultaneously had solo shows in Rome, Parma, Turin, and Naples. In 1973, he participated in the Tenth Rome Quadrennial and in Contemporanea. In 1974, the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma hosted his first major retrospective, curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle.

In 1976, he was featured in the exhibition Europe/America: Geometric Abstraction 1960–76 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna. Two years later, he returned to the Venice Biennale with the By the Sea and Equestrian Paintings series—works of great grace and lightness, representing a rediscovered creative freshness.

In the early 1980s, he was invited to Art and Criticism 1980 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. In 1981, he took part in the exhibition Italian Identity at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. During this period, he created the cycles Architectures, Cosmetics, Biplanes, and Botanical Gardens. In 1982, his works appeared in the exhibition Avant-garde/Transavant-garde on the Aurelian Walls of Rome and at the 40th Venice Biennale. He was invited again to the Venice Biennale in 1984. At the same time, he presented the Unknown Nature cycle at the Piombi, showcasing his growing attention to nature. This gave rise to works like Water Lilies, Wheat Fields, Waves, and a series of paintings made with sand for a desert-themed exhibition in Jordan. His canvases donated to Gibellina for the town’s artistic reconstruction after the earthquake also stemmed from this new pictorial impulse. In 1985, in Florence’s Piazza Santissima Annunziata, he painted live before six thousand people the monumental Chimera(four by ten meters), inaugurating an exhibition on the Etruscans. In 1988, the Adrien Maeght Gallery in Paris opened his exhibition The Secret of Eternal Youth, a Dionysian Faust. In 1989, he was one of the featured artists in the Italian Art of the 20th Century exhibition organized by the Royal Academy in London. Solo shows were held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Ferrara.

In 1990, after a decade of intense painting during which he produced many of his most moving works, he reopened the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome with Divulgare: a showcase of exceptionally large works created using early digital technologies. The reproduced images combined unconscious dimensions with television-filtered reality. These large paintings depicted satellite imagery, environmental emergencies, and war. His civic engagement extended to supporting the campaigns of Greenpeace, UNHCR, and numerous other humanitarian organizations. In 1991, he held the exhibition Extroverted at the Mazzoli Gallery in Modena. The 1993 Venice Biennale, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, dedicated a solo room to him in the Shifts section. The following year, he took part in the exhibition The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968 organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 1996, he exhibited in Spain and Latin America with the show Auxiliary Muse, an homage to television.

The 1990s also marked Schifano’s interest in the potential of the web, while he simultaneously devoted himself to photography and expanded his serial painting production by using television as a commercial medium. In 1997, a year before his sudden death in his studio, he took part in Minimalia at Palazzo Querini Dubois in Venice.