Mario Radice (Como, 1898 – 1987) was an Italian painter widely regarded as one of the leading abstract artists of his country. He matters because he was among the first Italian artists to abandon figurative painting and join the abstract movement then flourishing across Europe.
Radice belonged to the group known as the "astrattisti comaschi", together with Manlio Rho, Aldo Galli, Carla Badiali and others, a name that recalls the early European experiments in abstract art. He was drawn to rationalist architecture and worked closely with leading Italian rationalist architects, among them Terragni, Lingeri, Sartoris and Cattaneo.
His international reputation grew with the abstract frescoes he made between 1933 and 1936 for the Casa del Fascio in Como, a municipal building by Giuseppe Terragni for the National Fascist Party. The frescoes were destroyed at the end of the Second World War, though photographic documentation of them survives.
His work was shown at nine Venice Biennales between 1940 and 1979, and on three of those occasions he had a solo room. In 2007, some of his works were included in two major exhibitions held at the Royal Palace in Milan. His painting is recognizable for pure, harmonious geometric forms in warm colours, a trait he shared with Manlio Rho, the other principal founder of the Italian abstract school. His works are held in the permanent collections of several modern art museums, including those in Milan, Trento, Rovereto, Turin and Rome.