Festa Veneziana: The Imaginative World of Carlo Marchiori coming to the Italian American Museum of San Francisco

Carlo Marchiori was born in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, and studied classic art and academic design in Padua and Venice. At the age of eighteen, he left Italy to live in Canada where he worked as illustrator and film animator for C.B.C. Television and the National Film Board of Canada. In 1967 he was nominated for an Academy Award for an animated short film, but eventually abandoned filmmaking and advertising for painting and sculpture.
Since moving to California in 1978, Marchiori has become a world-renowned muralist specializing in period art interpretations.

He produces murals in Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassic styles using fresco- like techniques.
In San Francisco, his murals adorn the lobby of the Hotel St. Francis, the couture department of Nordstrom, the walls and ceiling of Emporio Rulli, and have drawn critical praise at 1001 Nob Hill and Square One restaurants. They are also features of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Raffles in Singapore and Tokyo’s Disney Resort.

A true “Renaissance man”, Marchiori also produces original ceramic plates, ceramic tile panels, paintings, sculptures, furniture and Roman style base-relief stone plaques. He favors subjects of figures and animals caught in fluid spontaneity and his Venetian background shines through with zany Commedia dell’Arte themes. His traditional education enables him to interpret Pompeiian, Classical and Baroque subjects with brilliant virtuosity.

He currently resides in Calistoga at “Ca’ Toga”, a villa he designed and built in the style of Renaissance Italian architect Andrea Palladio. The interior of the villa is filled with Marchiori’s art. Many walls feature huge fres- coes filled with mystical gods and monsters, and whole rooms are painted to look like caves or forests. The house is a remarkable monument to his versatile talents and boundless imagination.

Many pieces from Ca’ Toga and from Marchiori’s Galleria d’Arte in Calistoga will be on display at the Museo Italo Americano from March 1 through June 3, 2012.