Mark Kostabi was born in Los Angeles in 1960 to Estonian immigrants. He studied drawing and painting at California State University, Fullerton, then moved to New York in 1982. By 1984, emerged as a leading figure in the now legendary East Village art scene.
By 1987, his work was widely exhibited in New York galleries and other US galleries, as well as s, Japan, Germany and Australia. He founded Kostabi World in 1988, his New York Art & TV Studio. In in the 1990's his work was widely exhibited throughout Italy and he started dividing his time between Rome and New York.
Kostabi produces a weekly cable TV show and he writes an advice column for artists, Ask Mark Kostabi, for Artnet.com. Kostabi has designed album covers for Guns 'N' Roses (Use Your Illusion) and The Ramones (Adios Amigos), Jimmy Scott (Holding Back The Years) and numerous products including a Swatch watch, the Bloomingdales bag, Alessi vases, Rosenthal espresso cups, and a Giro d'Italia pink jersey.
Kostabi is also known for his many collaborations with other artists including Enzo Cucchi, Arman, Howard Finster, Tadanori Yokoo, Enrico Baj and Paul Kostabi.
Retrospective exhibitions of Kostabi's paintings have been held at the Mitsukoshi Museum in Tokyo (1992) and the Art Museum of Estonia in Tallinn (1998). There was a vast exhibition of 150 Kostabi paintings at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome in 2006. Kostabi's work is in over 50 permanent museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Groninger Museum in Holland.
His permanent public works include a mural in Palazzo dei Priori in Arezzo, Italy, a large bronze sculpture in the central square of San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy, and a bronze portrait of Pope John Paul II in Velletri, Italy.
Kostabi has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, A Current Affair, Nightwatch (with Charlie Rose), The Oprah Winfrey Show, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Nonsolomoda, West 57th, CNN, MTV and numerous television programs throughout Europe and Japan. In print he has been featured in The New York Times, People, Vogue, Architectural Digest, The Face, Playboy, Forbes, New York Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, Domus, Corriera Della Sera, Panorama, Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art, Arte, Arte In and Tema Celeste. He has also had many books written by or about him.