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biography
MARIO BALLOCCO was born in Milan (Italy) in 1913. Ballocco has always preferred research and scientific experimentation to the artistic profession and the struggle for fame and financial success. However, in 1950, with Burri, Capogrosso and Colla, he founded the "Origine" group, one of the first formations in Italy in favor of a rigorously non-figurative art. In April 1951 he announced the dissolution of the group in the magazine "AZ" (N. 11), which he founded in 1949 and edited until 1952 and which was fully engaged in the controversies that animated the continuity of abstract research in postwar Italy. In it Ballocco wrote about the function of color and the relationship between geometrical-abstract art and industrial design. In 1954 at the Turin Motor Show he presented his research on the new uses of color applied to industrial production and in relation to its visual-optical and psychological function. He also founded a quarterly magazine, Colore estetica e logica, dedicated to the problems of chromatic objectivation and to the development of an interdisciplinary methodology, which he called "Chromatology," to better define the science of color. In 1958, at the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica in Milan, he organized the first exhibition on "Color," which was divided into inductive chromatological sectors (physics, physiology, psychology) and experimental sectors (color in treatment, study, working environments, in public services, in traffic signs, etc.). He also sought the collaboration and advice of scientists working in the fields of physics, optics, psychology and medicine. In 1960, at a congress in Salsomaggiore, Italy, he explained his important theories concerning the sociology of color. The ongoing theme of his artistic production is the illustration at an aesthetic level of his scientific research, his primary interest being the investigation of phenomena connected with the vision. In 1970 a room was dedicated to his work at the biennials in Venice and Sao Paulo in Brazil. At the Carrara Academy in Bergamo in 1970 and two years later at the Brera Academy he introduced Chromatology as a new academic subject. Subsequently, having stopped teaching, he promoted the foundation of an Institute of Chromatology in Milan. In 1983 his work was included in the "L'ultima avanguardia" exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. The results of his experimental research have been presented in many industrially-advanced countries, where they aroused great interest also on account of their therapeutical implications. Of particular interest is his study on fictitious colors fabricated by the sense organs in order to compensate and balance the perceptive data when it does not correspond to a preconstituted mental image.
exhibitions