Very little is known about the life of Mario Garcia. Born in New York City in 1927, he attended the École des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland from 1947-1952 and then moved back to the Hamptons, Long Island where he lived in a red barn that belonged to Barney Rossett, husband of the artist Joan Mitchell. It was through this connection that Garcia learned about Abstract Expressionism and then became part of what is referred to as the “second generation” or “second wave” of Abstract Expressionist artists along with Grace Hartigan, Michael Goldberg, and Al Leslie. He had a series of one man shows in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Lausanne, New York, Vienna, East Hampton, and Milan, and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Dayton Art Institute, the Norfolk Museum of Arts & Sciences, and the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland.