Mario De Biasi

Desulo, via Lamarmora. Fotografia di Mario de Biasi, 1955

Mario De Biasi was born in Sois, near Belluno, in 1923. Deported to Germany during the Second World War, he began to photograph in Nuremberg in 1944 with makeshift equipment found in the rubble of the city.
Back in Italy, he moved to Milan at a very young age. He successfully attended the “Milanese Photographic Circle” and in 1948 he organized his first solo exhibition.
Turning to professionalism, in 1953 he joined the staff of the reporters of “Epoca”, thus establishing a collaborative relationship that would last several decades. For this magazine he wrote some of his most important reports: the popular uprising in Budapest in 1956, the eruption of Etna in 1964, the flood in Florence in 1966, the earthquake in Sicily and the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In more than fifty years of activity, he has photographed all the main national and international events; with his images, articles, phototexts, special issues of magazines and more than 85 books have been illustrated, in addition to the countless personal and collective exhibitions.
The same number of awards: among these, the Eric Solomon Preis in Cologne in 1964, the Saint Vincent prize for journalism in 1982 and a lifetime achievement award at the Arles Festival in 1994.
In 1955 he arrived in Sardinia for the first time. With its objective, it investigates and captures the most curious and interesting aspects of a society that is still substantially integrated in customs and traditions, but also captures the first signs of change. The images taken during his travels to the island, accompanied by the texts of an exceptional journalist, the poet Alfonso Gatto, will illustrate on 'Epoca' the series of columns 'The Italy we don't know'. In the following years he will return to the island several times. His archive of Sardinian images is unique for the quality and variety of topics covered.

Update

10/2/2026 - 14:55