Detailed Biography

Mario Yrissary is a Philippine-born artist who migrated to the United States in 1945 at the young age of 12. He later married Helen Whitleberg in 1958. Yrissary obtained his American citizenship in 1964, and continued his passion for art and teaching in New York City for several years. Several schools in which Yrissary taught were: Great Neck Public Schools, Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts, New York, California Institute of the Arts in Berkeley, CA, and Herbert H. Lehman College in New York.

Yrissary had attended two colleges while he was in New York City. He obtained his Bachelors in Arts degree at Queens College in New York in 1955. and eventually continued his education at Cooper Union under Charles Cajori in 1958. Yrissary has received awards from: the Lincoln Center poster commission for the 3rd International Choral Festival in New York, and has also received grants from the Ford Foundation.

His art has been collected by various museums and galleries such as: Whitney Museum in New York, Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana, Rose Art Museum in Bradeis University, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania, Larry Aldrich Museum in Connecticut, Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, Storm King Art Center in New York, and Hirshborn Collection in Washington.

Publications by Yrissary include “First Person Singular” in The Gallery Magazine (1970), as well as “Poems” in Tracks <vol.1.no.1> (1974). Several publications on Yrissary include:
“Review” by Don Judd in Artsmagazine (1964); “New Abstraction” by Rolf-Gunter Dienst (1965); “Art” in The Village Voice by John Perreault (1969).

Yrissary has exhibited his artwork all across the globe. His individual solo exhibitions include shows at the Graham Gallery in New York in 1964, 1965, and 1967. Yrissary had also held a solo exhibition in Deson-Zaks Gallery in Chicago in 1970. Several of Yrissary’s groups exhibitions include: March Gallery in New York (1959); Painting Without a Brush at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (1965); 4th International Young Artists Exhibition (US-Japan) (1967); Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York (1969); Spray at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California (1971); Recent Acquisitions at the Whitney Museum in New York (1973); The International Style in America at the Lowe Art Museum in Miami (1974).

“ I am a New Yorker. I grew up in its slums and survived its educational system. While in art school, I discovered the Cedar Bar. I missed Jackson Pollock by six months. I saw the take-off De Kooning, Kline Rothko, David Smith, Newman Reinhardt, etc. Except for Thelonious Monk and the development of Progressive Jazz, there was nothing as exciting as the New York School in the fifties. The cultural blast peaked with the decline of Tenth Street. I belonged to one of those co-operatives as did Mark di Suvero, Al Held, Nick Krushenick, Ronnie Bladen, and many others. My apprenticeship was over when Abstract Expressionism died in 1960. Patricide and reaction followed predictably. Pop Art and Hard Edge appeared. Not interested in Pop, I went the other way- non-gestural painting with a spray gun in 1963. I had three shows with Robert Graham in 1964, 1965, and 1967. In that period, my paintings changed from ideographic, one-of-a-kind, to serial work. Paralleling that development was a growth toward color at the expense of form and value painting. From serial, the painting became systematic, the system of painting becoming as important as the sequence. The spray gun gave way to the airbrush. Form was reduced to grid. My first show with Ivan Karp consisted of color in grids and squares. The grid developed internal patterns that following year, 1970. I have been painting patterns ever since. Pattern painting is the vital alternative to 'empty center', peripheral, minimal, base color-field painting. It is overall color, a philosophy about perceptions, restrained gestures, Zen-like concentration and control, a fusion on Eastern and Western thought painting, As of this year I’ll shuttle between Manila and New York. There are great patterns in Dayao." –Mario Yrissary