Mario Maffioli was born in 1960 in San Jose, Costa Rica. He studied at the Fine Arts School of the University of Costa Rica. Maffioli is a founding member of the Bocaraca Group (a well known group of Costa Rican artists) and an active member of the Costa Rican Association of Watercolorists. “Maffioli’s paintings are bold, often electrifying statements that capture the essential signs of nature’s language. Abstractionist painters have been deriving inspiration from nature since the heyday of the Impressionists. But their approach has usually been to take certain forms—flowers, say, or mountains—and subject them to reductive distortions, translating the familiar elements of the natural world into artistic images. In the process, something is distilled from the natural world which becomes useable in aesthetic statements. The general impetus toward flatness which typified Modernist painting, for example, ultimately led to surprising new forms that recall the three dimensional world of nature but translated it into fresh two-dimensional images and compositions. Maffioli’s art, though influenced by the gestural freedom of Abstract Expressionism and the use of pure color seen in Minimalist and Color Field painting, enacts a different process altogether”. (Ricardo Pau-Llosa).

Selected solo exhibitions: 2013 – Jugar Pintando, Ministerio de Cultura de Costa Rica (San José, Costa Rica), Impresiones, Escuela Integral de Artes de Santa Ana (Santa Ana, Costa Rica), 2011 – Naturalist Abstraction II, Casa del Cuño, Costa Rican Art Museum (San José, Costa Rica), 1999 – Pinturas de Mario Maffioli, National Gallery, National Center for the Sciences and Technology Museum (San José, Costa Rica), 1997 – Macrocromo, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (San Jose, Costa Rica), 1995 – Abstracción Naturalista I, National Art Gallery of Contemporary Art, Costa Rican Art Museum (San José, Costa Rica).

Selected group exhibitions: 2010 – Cultural Expressions, Christiane Peugeot Foundation, Atellier Z (Paris, France), 2010 – Costacuarela 2010: “Dípticos del agua”, Galería José Figueres Ferrer, Barrio Escalante (San José, Costa Rica), Exposición de la Colección permanente MADC, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (San José, Costa Rica), 2009 -¿Abstracción?, Galería Kandinsky (San José, Costa Rica), 2006 – Agua, Color y Permanencia: Historia de la Acuarela de Costa Rica, Museos del Banco Central (San José, Costa Rica), 2003 – ¡Viva la Pintura! Bocaracá, Museo Calderón Guardia( San José, Costa Rica), 1998 – Senza Paura, Galería Fluxus (Milán, Italy), 1994 – Costa Rica en el Arte, Capital Bank (Miami, Florida, USA), Latin American Magic Realism, The Robert Smith Gallery (New York, New York, USA), 1988 – III Bienal Lachner & Sáenz de Pintura Costarricense, Museos del Banco Central (San José, Costa Rica), 1986 – Jóvenes Valores del Arte Costarricense, Galería Lachner & Sáenz (San José, Costa Rica).

Museum and private Collections: Banco Central de Costa Rica (Costa Rica), Banco Nacional de Costa Rica (Costa Rica), Museo de Arte Costarricense, (Costa Rica), Museo de Arte y Diseño contemporáneo (Costa Rica), Museo de la Estampa (Mexico), Pinacoteca de Pireos (Greece), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Puerto Rico), Universidad de Costa Rica (Costa Rica), Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (Costa Rica), The Ulrich Pegels Collection (Spain), Roche Farmacéutica (Costa Rica), Hotel Four Seasons (Costa Rica), Poma Collection (El Salvador), Periódico La Nación (Costa Rica), Luciano Benetton Collection (Italy), Trudy y Daniel Reagan Collection (USA), Eduardo y Rocío Ulibarri Collection (Costa Rica), María Soledad Zuñiga Collection (Costa Rica), Dr josé Molleda Collection (Costa Rica), Teletica canal 7 (Costa Rica), Dr Abel Víquez Collection (Costa Rica), Haydeé Mendiola Collection (Costa Rica), Fuchs-Hernández Collection (Costa Rica), Fanny Cordoba Collection (Costa Rica), Rubí- Cascante Collection (Costa Rica), Karen y Jacobo Aizemann Collection (Costa Rica), Melania y Mario Carazo Collection (Costa Rica), The Olsson Art Collection (Sweden/Malta), Per Zaunders Collection (Malta), Håkan Mårtensson Collection (Sweden), Lennart Green Collection (Sweden), Catarina Fritz Collection (Sweden), Liselotte Jansson Collection (Sweden), Lena & Peter Mangbo Collection (Sweden).