BARTOlini RETROspective runs until September 5 at Mur Art Gallery
MONTREAL, August 26, 2025 — The late Mario Bartolini could easily be described as a “Renaissance man”.
Born the son of Italian immigrants in Montreal in 1930, Bartolini was a naturally gifted individual in many ways. Academically gifted, he skipped grades twice during his schooling and became fluently trilingual (English, French and Italian). His academic precociousness followed him when he enrolled at Montreal’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he became an assistant professor — before he even had the chance to finish his studies—and then was elevated to a full-time position as a professor after he graduated.
He also possessed a sense of intellectual curiousity and an encyclopedic knowledge on a number of subjects. That extended to his love of classical music (especially the works of Mozart), rock music (Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan), art (Leonardo Da Vinci and Paul Cezanne), literature (he boasted that he read the works of Pirandello in their original Italian language texts), films (Pasolini and Fellini) and sculpture (Henry Moore and Alexander Calder).
And speaking of sculpture, Bartolini was quite a talented, prolific sculptor, in which he produced hundreds of pieces of varying artistic styles, genres and materials (such as terra cotta, metal, stone and wood); however, because of his disdain for the international art scene and its vapid commercialization of professionally produced paintings and sculptures, Bartolini kept most of his works hidden from the eyes of the general public, in which he stored them in boxes and left them to gather dust in the basement of his home for over 30 years.
In the years before his death in 2015, when geriatric dementia—and later Alzheimer’s Disease—took over his body and mind, Bartolini made his oldest son Dino promise him that he would destroy all of his sculptures following his death. Dino couldn’t accept such a task, and asked him for the umpteenth time if he could set up an exhibition of some of his works. This time, Bartolini relented, but under one condition: that the exhibition will take place 10 years after his death.
On August 22, the day that would have been Bartolini’s 95th birthday, the promised exhibition — called “BARTOlini RETROspective”—that celebrates Mario Bartolini’s life and artistic talent, opened at the Mur Art Gallery, located at 5826 St. Hubert Street, and runs until September 5.
“This exhibition was like killing two birds with one stone. It celebrates my father’s 95th birthday, and it shows 159 sculptures that my father created, which were mainly stored in boxes and were never opened. This was art that many people didn’t know about,” said Dino during a recent phone interview.
Dino, who previously worked as a production manager, stage manager, soundman, promoter and in other capacities for over 40 years in the music industry and worked alongside such stars as Celine Dion and Garou, as well as the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Osheaga and the Francofolies, took on the painstaking task of selecting the pieces from his father’s unseen massive collection, and along with the Mur Gallery, select what would go on display.
“I am going to be present at the gallery throughout the run of the exhibition to meet the visitors as they discover my father’s works,” he said. “My father once told me as he accepted the idea of an exhibition ‘Show the pieces. If people want to buy them, let them!'”
Dino believes that the exhibition is the kind of show that his father would have wanted, and would not echo a typical art gallery show. “This is not a typical art show, where things are displayed in a chronological manner. The pieces for most part don’t have names, but thanks to the many notes and notebooks he left behind, it will offer the stories behind the works,” he said.
“My father didn’t have the guts to be a full-time artist. He realized he couldn’t support himself as an artist, because the income was minimal at best. That is why his longtime job at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts practically saved him. When he saw stories in the newspaper about a Picasso painting that sold for millions of dollars, it would drive him crazy. The art market is always changing and is totally commercialized. If you think show business is cut throat, the art world is even more so,” he added.
Although Bartolini was a tortured individual who struggled with mental health issues, Dino also got to experience growing up with a creative and talented father. This was especially so when Bartolini built from scratch many unusual toys for Dino and his four siblings to play with.
“My dad made a lot of toys for us. In 1964, he built a cannon-style rocket launcher that we played with in front of our house. And when the Apollo space missions happened during the late 1960s, he built a rocket ship with two ladders; we played with that until it literally fell apart,” he said. “And even though he never did a commissioned work, he drew a pretend passport picture of me for a play passport. And there were always plenty of crayons and pencils for us to draw with.”
Although Dino and his family had to cope with Bartolini’s dark side, he believes that if his father was still around, he would have liked the exhibition, but approach it in his shy, humble manner. “You never knew what kind of mood he would be in and when he would change,” he said. “He was really afraid of criticism, and if he received letters from people who were interested in buying his works, he would immediately refuse them. He would have been humble about the exhibition and eventually accept it; however, we would have literally had to drag him to the gallery.”
Gallery hours for the BARTOlini RETROspective at the Mur Art Gallery are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Tuesday and Wednesday), 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Thursday and Friday) and 12 to 5 p.m. (Saturday).
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