Mimmo Paladino Wall Decorations

Mixed media on paper and wood behind aryl glass Mimmo Paladino, Italy 2009 (2/20) Mimmo Paladino found art inspired by his uncle, a painter who introduced him to traditional techniques at an early age. After attending the 1964 Venice Biennale, he made the decision to become an artist. He studied painting at the Liceo Artistico in Benevento from 1964 to 1968 and, influenced by Max Ernst and Paul Klee, experimented with collages, frottages and non-objective paintings. In 1968 he finished his academic training with a diploma and began to paint freely. In the early to Mid-1970s, the artist dealt almost exclusively with mythological themes, such as the Icarus myth, which he translated into drawings. In the process, Paladino developed his own fresco-like technique, significant for his later work, in which he painted large-scale walls with pastel colors. Paladino had his first exhibition in 1977 at the "Galerie Lucio Amelio" in Naples. Several trips to Milan as well as contact with the art critic Tommaso Trini and the gallery owner Franco Toselli soon made Paladino known nationwide. In Toselli's gallery he presented his murals for the first time in 1978. That same year he traveled to New York, where he met Sandro Chia and Francesco Clemente. Several trips to Brazil followed. In 1980 Mimmo Paladino, together with the publisher Emilio Mazzoli, published a book with texts by Achille Bonito Oliva. The art critic Oliva had introduced the term Transavanguardia at the end of the 1970s for the style of the new movement, mainly characterized by young Italian artists such as Chia, Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Paladino, who found parallels in Germany with the Neue Wilde. In the same year Paladino participated in the Aperto 80 Biennale in Venice and in 1982 in the Biennale of Sydney. In the following years Paladino had exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum in Basel and at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Bologna. In 1999 he had an extensive retrospective at the Lenbachhaus in Munich and in the same year he became an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato dedicated an extensive retrospective to him in 2002/2003. Works by Mimmo Paladino can be found in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist lives and works in Milan and Benevento, Italy. PLANT Mimmo Paladino's works are often mixed media on paper or wood pre-sketched with drawing pencil, using all traditional means. His oeuvre includes watercolor, oil painting, and tempera, as well as collage, frottage, engraving, drypoint, or woodcut. Paladino's paintings are often untitled. Examples 1987: The Perfect Room 1992: hortus conclusus, horse sculpture in Benevento, Chiostro di San Domenico 1993: montagna bianca 2002: Le chien 2004: ciclismo 2008: Porta di Lampedusa - Porta d'Europa, iron sculpture covered with ceramic plates on the beach of Lampedusa in memory of the migrants who lost their lives at sea EXHIBITIONS 1979: Transavanguardia, Turin 1980: Venice Biennale, Venice 1982: documenta 7, Kassel 1982: Biennale of Sydney, Sydney 1984: Merianpark, Basel, sculpture in the 20th century...