Mimmo Rotella, Pierre Restany, Filippo Panseca

Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella ( Catanzaro, 7 October 1918 –

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

, 8 January 2006) was an Italian

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

considered an important figure in post-war European art. Best known for his works of

décollage ''Décollage'', in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image.

and

psychogeographics Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolution ...

, made from torn advertising posters. He was associated to the

Ultra-Lettrists The Ultra-Lettrist art movement was developed by Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J. Wolman, and François Dufrêne in the 1950s when they split from Isidore Isou's Lettrism movement. Dufrêne created a phonetic poetry movement which breaks the structures o ...

an offshoot of Lettrism and later was a member of the ''

Nouveau Réalisme Nouveau réalisme (French: new realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Pierre Restany wrot ...

'', founded in 1960 by the art critic

Pierre Restany Pierre Restany (24 June 1930 – 29 May 2003), was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher. Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning ...

Biography

1918–1951

After finishing school studies he moves to

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

in 1933 to pursue his artistic studies, but he got a job at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. In 1941, he moved to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. He remains in the capital only for a short period, because he is called up. In 1944 he left the army and he graduated from the Art School of Naples. Between 1944 and 1945 he teaches drawing in Catanzaro. In 1945 he returned to Rome and, following his figurative beginnings and first experimentations, he began to paint new-geometric paintings. He starts in 1947 to participate at the exhibition, with the Exhibition Board of Fine Arts and the annual Art Club. In 1949 he devoted himself to the phonetic poetry experiments, calling epistaltic (a meaningless neologism), which in the same year he draws up the Manifesto (published by L.Sinisgalli in "Civilization of machines")

1951–1953

In 1951 he had his first contact with French art, exhibiting in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

at the Salon des Nouvelles Réalités. Between 1951 and 1952, he obtained the award of a scholarship from the

Fulbright Foundation The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

, which allows him to travel to the US as an "Artist in Residence" at the University of Kansas City. Also in 1952 he realized the second personal exhibition at the Rockhill Nelson Gallery in Kansas City. In the United States he had the opportunity to meet representatives of the new artistic currents:

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

, Claes Oldenburg,

Cy Twombly Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Twombly is said to have influenced you ...

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

and

Yves Klein Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...

1953

In 1953, he suffers from an artistic crisis, during which interrupts his pictorial production. Now convinced that there is nothing to be done again in art, suddenly what he calls "Zen illumination": the discovery of the advertising poster as artistic expression of the city. Thus the

(early collages) was born: paste on canvas pieces of torn posters of the street, by adopting the collages of the cubists and contaminating it with Dadaist array of ready made. In 1955, in Rome, in the exhibition "actual art exhibition", he exhibited for the first time the 'torn poster'. Later, he practiced the so-called double décollage: the poster firstly removed from the billboard, then torn up in his studio. In those years he also made use of the retro d'affiche, using the posters pasted on the side and obtaining non-figurative and

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

works.

1953–1960

The first awards arrive in 1956 with the Graziano Award and in 1957 with the Battistoni Prize and Public Education. With the

Cinecittà Cinecittà Studios (; Italian for Cinema City Studios), is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios we ...

series of 1958, select figures and faces of film advertising directing production toward more figurative works. At the end of the Fifties, Rotella, is labeled by critics as a ripper or painter of glued paper. At night, tearing not only posters but also pieces of sheet metal from frames of the billboard zones of the Rome Municipality. In 1958 he receives in Rome the visit of the French critic

, with whom he began a long association. In the same year he participated in Rome in the exhibition "New Italian art trends" organized by

Lionello Venturi Lionello Venturi (25 April 1885, Modena – 14 August 1961, Rome) was an Italian historian and critic of art. He edited the first catalogue raisonné of Paul Cézanne. Life Lionello Venturi was born in 1885, son of art historian Adolfo Venturi. ...

in the seat of Rome - New York Art Foundation. The curiosity of the public for the artist's extravagances, culminated in 1960 with the creation, the work of Enzo Nasso, a short film dedicated to angry Painters, which cure Rotella spoken commentary.

1960–1980

Also in 1960 he joined the New Realism - but he didn't sign the manifesto - theorist of which

and bringing together, among others,

, Spoerri, Tinguely, César,

Arman Arman (November 17, 1928 – October 22, 2005) was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman was a painter who moved from using objects for the ink or paint traces they leave (''cachets'', ''allures d'objet'') to ...

and Christo. The group will also take part in the French Hains, Dufrêne and Villeglé, operating on

in the same years, but independently. Together with décollages, Rotella also performs assemblage of objects bought from junk dealers as bottle caps or cords. Pop Art and

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

, with the Informal and the spatial and material research in those years,

Lucio Fontana Lucio Fontana (; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He is mostly known as the founder of Spatialism. Early life Born in Rosario, to Italian immigrant parents, he was t ...

and

Alberto Burri Alberto Burri (12 March 191513 February 1995; ) was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as ...

taking place in Italy, they play an important role in the orientation of Rotella. In 1961 he composed a historical exhibition À 40 ° au-dessus de Dada, edited in Paris by Restany. In 1962 he gives a presentation on his art at the School of Visual Arts in New York and in 1964 he was invited to the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

and, in 1965, the IX Quadrennial of Rome. Using typographic tools, between 1967 and 1973 he created his Art-typo, prints chosen and reproduced freely on the canvas. This procedure is able to overlap and superimpose advertising images, reversing the previous approach. In the early seventies produces some works by intervening on the advertising pages of magazines with the use of solvents and reducing or state at the imprint (frottage) or deleting one (effaçage). In 1972, he published his autobiography entitled Autorotella. In 1975 he recorded his first disc of phonetic poetry and in 1976 he took part in the "International Poetry Recital Sonora - Poetry Action". Another trial, in those years, it is that of rolling up posters and closing them in plexiglass cubes.

1980–2006

Finally he left Paris to settle in

(1980), in the eighties he processes the "blanks" or affiches covers: zeroed advertising posters covered with white sheets, as with the expired advertisement. In 1984 he made the second cycle of works dedicated to the cinema: Cinecittà 2. After 1986 he realizes 'Sovrapitture', inspired by graffiti: intervenes pictorially of torn poster glued on canvas. It drew anonymous writings, such as those that can be read on city walls: love notes and political slogans, etc., in a double message. In 1990 he participated at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the exhibition "Art et Pub" and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

exhibition "High and Low". He married in 1991 with the Russian Inna Agarounova, and in 1993 they had a child called Asya. In 1992 from the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, he receives the title of 'Officiel des arts et des Lettres'. A foundation dedicated to him was established in 2000, to the artist's will: the 'Fondazione Mimmo Rotella', with the aim of collecting the works and documents cataloged in the artistic life of the teacher. In 2004 Rotella received an honorary degree in Architecture at the University Mediterranea of

Reggio Calabria Reggio di Calabria ( scn, label= Southern Calabrian, Riggiu; el, label= Calabrian Greek, Ρήγι, Rìji), usually referred to as Reggio Calabria, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, is the largest city in Calabria. It has an estimated popul ...

. He was invited to the

Guggenheim Museum in 1994 for the exhibition "Italian Metamorphosis", then again at the Centre Pompidou in 1996 in "Face à l'Histoire", and in 1996 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in "Halls of Mirrors "exhibition subsequently exported all over the world. The

Federico Fellini Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most i ...

film dedicates the series of works called Fellini. He died in Milan on January 8, 2006 at the age of 88 years.

Artwork

Décollages

Décollage ''Décollage'', in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image.

is an artistic technique of collage to the opposite procedure. Instead of adding elements of the work, it starts from an artistic object from which the parts are detached. The idea of decollage was born during a period of "artistic crisis" and took place following the trip to the US, during which he was in contact with members of the New Dada. Back in Rome he became inspired by torn posters around the town and began to carry them in his studio and to work on them. The result was the creation of canvases on which Rotella pasted one or more pieces of torn posters, often superimposed. Rotella wanted to somehow find some form of artistic innovation and at the same time give artistic dignity to a common object, and of little value removed from its natural environment. The first trials of Rotella with decollage date back to 1953. The first decollage, in most small cases, were exhibited for the first time in the spring of 1955.

Retro d'affiches

The two roads that Rotella takes on simultaneously, starting in 1953-1954 are those of decollage and retro posters. The first retro d'affiche documented back to 1954. The retro d'affiche are displayed for the first time to the public in December 1955 at the personal exhibition the artist held at the Galleria del Naviglio in

. Unlike decollage where often textural layers are wrapped together and manipulated, in the back of posters the artist retains the "urban relic". In these works his speech tends to be subtle, the colors are often absent, the surface is gritty and raw, it has compared to decollage a more targeted research to informal language, except that it will become evident starting especially from the sixties when decollages in expected to bet influenced by the rising pop language.

Selected works

Décollages

Muro romano
1958,

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

, Washington D.C.
Untitled
1958,

The Menil Collection The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawing ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Not in Venice
1959,

MART Mart may refer to: * Mart, or marketplace, a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods * Mart (broadcaster), a local broadcasting station in Amsterdam * Mart (given name) * Mart (Syr ...

Rovereto Rovereto (; "wood of sessile oaks"; locally: ''Roveredo'') is a city and ''comune'' in Trentino in northern Italy, located in the Vallagarina valley of the Adige River. History Rovereto was an ancient fortress town standing at the frontier b ...

A strappo deciso
1960, MACRO,

Avventuroso
1961,

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

With a Smile
1962,

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

Modern,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Little Monument to Rotella
1962,

MoMa Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Casablanca
1965–80, Fondazione

Solomon R. Guggenheim Solomon Robert Guggenheim (February 2, 1861 – November 3, 1949) was an American businessman and art collector. He is best known for establishing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Guggen ...

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

Sculptures

Little Monument to Rotella
1962,

Museums

* The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,

* MACI — Museo Arte Contemporanea,

Isernia Isernia () or, in Pliny and later writers, ''Eserninus'', or in the Antonine Itinerary, ''Serni''. is a town and ''comune'' in the southern Italian region of Molise, and the capital of province of Isernia. Geography Situated on a rocky crest ri ...

* MACRO — Museo d´Arte Contemporanea

* MART — Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto,

Trento Trento ( or ; Ladin and lmo, Trent; german: Trient ; cim, Tria; , ), also anglicized as Trent, is a city on the Adige River in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol in Italy. It is the capital of the autonomous province of Trento. In the 16th centu ...

* MUMOK — Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig,

Wien en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lich ...

Köln Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...

* Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou,

* MUSEION - Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art,

Bolzano Bolzano ( or ; german: Bozen, (formerly ); bar, Bozn; lld, Balsan or ) is the capital city of the province of South Tyrol in northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third la ...

* Museo d´Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce,

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

* Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna – Collecçao Berardo,

Sintra Sintra (, ) is a town and municipality in the Greater Lisbon region of Portugal, located on the Portuguese Riviera. The population of the municipality in 2011 was 377,835, in an area of . Sintra is one of the most urbanized and densely populated ...

Sprengel Museum Sprengel Museum is a museum of modern art in Hanover, Lower Saxony, holding one of the most significant collections of modern art in Germany. It is located in a building situated adjacent to the Masch Lake (german: Maschsee) approximately south ...

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...

* Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

* The

Tel Aviv Museum Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( he, מוזיאון תל אביב לאמנות ''Muzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut'') is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern and contemporary art from Israel and aroun ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

Bibliography

* ''Porta Portese'', in “Civiltà delle Macchine” (Roma), anno III, n. 1, gennaio 1955. * ''Il canto notturno dei pesci'', in “Civiltà delle Macchine” (Roma), anno III, n. 3, aprile 1955. * ''Cara Roma, ricordi quando i pittori…'', in “Corriere della Sera” (Milano), 26 ottobre 1987. * ''“Autopresentazione”'', in ''Mimmo Rotella'', Galleria d’Arte Selecta, Roma 1957. * ''“Autopresentazione”'', in ''Alternative Attuali'', L’Aquila 1962 * ''Caro Le Noci'', 1961, in P. Restany, ''Rotella: dal décollage alla nuova immagine'', Edizioni Apollinaire, Milano 1963. * ''“Autopresentazione”'', in ''Alternative Attuali 2. Rassegna Internazionale di Pittura Scultura Grafica'', L’Aquila 1965. * ''Autorotella. Autobiografia di un artista'', Sugar, Milano 1972. * ''Autopresentazione'', 29 aprile 1984. * ''L’ora della lucertola'', Spirali/Vel, Milano 2002. * P. Restany, Le ‘Nouveau Réalisme’ de Rotella, in “Metro 6 Special”, Arti Grafiche delle Venezie (Vicenza), June 1962 * P. Restany, Rotella: dal décollage alla nuova immagine, Edizioni Apollinaire, Milan, 1963 * P. Restany, Le

1960-1970, in “Chroniques de l’art vivant” (Paris), n. 14, October 1970 * T. Trini, Rotella, Prearo, Milan 1970 * A. Bonito Oliva, The Italian

Trans-avantgarde Transavantgarde or Transavanguardia is the Italian version of Neo-expressionism, an art movement that swept through Italy and the rest of Western Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s. The term ''transavanguardia'' was coined by the Italian art criti ...

. La transavanguardia italiana, Giancarlo Politi, Milan 1980 * G. Appella, Colloquio con Rotella, Edizioni della Cometa, Rome 1984 * Hunter Sam (a cura di), Rotella. Décollages 1954 - 1964, cat. mostra Galleria Marconi, Milano, Ed. Electa, November 1986. * C. Francblin, Les Nouveaux Réalistes, Editions du Regard, Paris 1997 * G. Joppolo, Mimmo Rotella, Fall, Paris 1997 * Celant, Mimmo Rotella. 1946-2005, Skira Editore, Milan 2007 * F. D’Amico, Rotella. Disegni, Umberto Allemandi & C., Turin 2008 * A. Fiz (a cura di), Mimmo Rotella. Opere su carta, Mondadori Electa, Milan 2008 * A. Fiz (a cura di), Mimmo Rotella. Roma Parigi New York, Skira, Milan 2009 * A cura di Bruno Di Marino, Marco Meneguzzo, Andrea La Porta, Lo sguardo espanso. Cinema d'artista italiano 1912-2012, Silvana Editoriale, 2012 * G. Celant (a cura di), Mimmo Rotella. Décollages e retro d'affiches, Skira, Milan 2014 * Poesie der Großstadt. Die Affichisten''. Bernard Blistène, Fritz Emslander, Esther Schlicht, Didier Semin, Dominique Stella. Snoeck, Köln 2014

Recordings

* ''Poemi fonetici 1949-75'', Plura Records, Milan 1975. * ''Rotella variations'', in collaboration with Tiziana Ghiglioni, Enrico Rava, Emanuele Parrini, Gianluigi Troversi, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Claudio Fasoli, Dimitri Grechi Espinoza, Jacopo Martini, Franco Nesti,

Tiziano Tononi Tiziano Tononi (born November 18, 1956, Milan) is an Italian percussionist and composer. Biography Tononi taught himself to play drums in a pop/rock idiom as a youth, then turned to playing jazz and classical percussion in his late teens, studyi ...

, Splasc(h), Arcisate 2003.

Cinema

* L'ora della lucertola, directed by Mimmo Calopestri (2004)

References

External links

Official website

in the ''New York Times'', USA, 13 January 2006
Obituary
in the ''Independent'', UK, by James Kirkup 12 January 2006
Obituary
in ANSA, Italy, 9 January 2006
Aras Gallery Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rotella, Mimmo 1918 births 2006 deaths Italian contemporary artists Italian male poets Psychogeographers Writers from Calabria People from Catanzaro Nouveau réalisme artists 20th-century Italian poets 20th-century Italian male writers