Happy Birthday Mario!
He was an exuberant and prolific artist, loving the social scene.
His lifelong drug habit earned him the title of "cursed artist."
In the early '60s at Caffè Rosati, he met his future lover Anita Pallenberg and with her took his first trip to New York in '62, where he came into contact with Andy Warhol and participated in the surrounding social life, which led him to his initial experiments with LSD...
Back in Rome, he met and socialized with both Marco Ferreri and Giuseppe Ungaretti (to whom, already in his eighties, ehm, he offered an evening at the Peyote...).
Passionate about music, he forged a friendship with the Rolling Stones in London, to whom he introduced his aforementioned Anita Pallenberg, who in '65 began a relationship first with Brian Jones and then became the wife of Keith Richards; by '68, she had a relationship with Marianne Faithfull that made headlines in the English press always on the lookout for gossip.
During that period, for the film "L'harem" by Marco Ferreri, he created the opening and closing title sequences, and thanks to Ferreri's interest in his work, in '68 he managed to produce his "Trilogy for a Massacre," composed of 3 feature films: the first "Satellite," the second "Umano non umano" from '69, which featured contributions from, among others: Carmelo Bene, Alberto Moravia, and ehm, look a bit, also Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and the third "Trapianto, consunzione, morte di Franco Brocani," also from '69.
In '68, he designed the cover for "Stereoequipe" by Equipe 84.
In '69, his apartment, located in Piazza in Piscinula in Rome, was used by Marco Ferreri as a set for the film "Dillinger è morto," and you can see some of Mario's paintings on the walls.
In '69, the Rolling Stones dedicated the song "Monkey Man" to Mario, which we see here "Live" at Madison Square Garden in 2003 and nothing, actually no, it must be admitted that before he left us at just 63 years old (my age), Mario left many of his traces still visible today in museums, etc.
The Rolling Stones - Monkey Man (Live) - OFFICIAL