Mario Caria studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Rome, before taking his first steps as an illustrator designing sets for the "Paradiso and Favalli" film studio. The young artist then drew covers for Polar Books and various movie stills, as well as several posters for the 1960 Olympics Games. In 1962, he worked for the Nerbini comic series "Avventura West" and created his one and only own comic in 1963: "I Fratelli Senza Paura" (“Brothers Without Fear”), a Western story written by Emilio Fanelli. But Caria's best remembered for his work with publisher Fratelli Spada, as their most prolific cover artist. He produced hundreds of covers in the 1960's and 1970's, that appeared not only in Italy, but reprinted around the world.
Star Trek, The Phantom, Brick Bradford, Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant , and
Mandrake, were just a few of the popular characters he painted monthly. Mario was renowned for producing dynamic action scenes by only a simple phone call with an editor, able to capture the exact image for a cover. With that simple format, he illustrated around 40 covers per month. Once leaving publisher Fratelli Spada, Mario Caria worked for numerous Italian editors (both in books and comics as well as television magazines) until the early nineties. Outside print, he returned to Dino de Laurentis Studios drawing scenery for the sets. In 1992, an auction sale of his original works - mainly composed of his Fratelli Spada covers - was organized at Christie's offices in Rome, recognizing the value of his outstanding work over his many years as an illustrator.
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