Mimmo Paladino (born

Paduli Paduli is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Benevento in the Italian region Campania. It is located on a rocky spur between the Calore and Tammaro rivers, about 60 km northeast of Naples and about 9 km northeast of Benevent ...

, 18 December 1948) is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker. He is a leading name in the Transvanguardia artistic movement and one of the many European artists to revive

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

in the 1980s.

Biography

Paladino was born on 18 December 1948 in Paduli, Campania, but grew up and trained in

Benevento Benevento (, , ; la, Beneventum) is a city and ''comune'' of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill above sea level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino (or Beneventano) and the ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. From 1964 until 1968, he attended Liceo Artistico di Benevento. He made his debut in 1968 with a solo exhibition at the Galleria Carolina in Portici in Naples. Here he was presented by Achille Bonito Oliva, who was also present for the monographic show at Enzo Cannaviello's Studio Oggetto in Caserta the following year. However, we need to go back to 1964 to find the first major date in his artistic education. This was when, still a schoolboy, he visited the 32nd Venice Biennale and, in particular, the U.S. Pavilion, where he discovered the American Pop artists. In the early 1970s, his approach shifted towards conceptual art and photography, but by the mid-decade his painting had acquired considerable importance and appeared in a manifesto work, ''Silently, I Am Retiring to Paint a Picture'', which was shown in a room in which also the walls were painted. The aim was clearly a return to painting, as the principal place of narration. This was not to recapture the aspirations of the fifties and sixties, which in Italy reflected a painting tradition linked to pre-war artistic research, but rather to make a break with the influences that repudiated painting in the strictest sense, on which he intervened with a series of circular linguistic and semiotic interactions. In the late seventies, Paladino moved to Milan, where he later taught artistic disciplines at the Liceo school, while also working on his art. In 1977 came his first collaboration with Lucio Amelio, the historic gallery owner in Naples, and two years later he put on his first exhibition with another key gallerist, Emilio Mazzoli of Modena, for whom he made his first book-object – ''En-De-Re –'' in 1980. This was indeed another crucial year, for it was when he put on his first solo exhibition in New York (where he had just taken up temporary residence), in two different galleries – those of Maria Goodman and

Annina Nosei Annina Nosei (born 1939) is an Italian-born art dealer and gallerist. Nosei is best known for being Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first art dealer and providing him with studio space in the basement of her gallery. From 1981 to 2006, the Annina Nosei Gal ...

. International interest in his work and in that of other young Italians was growing, and in 1980 a traveling exhibition took works by Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Paladino, together with two other artists, Luigi Ontani and Ernesto Tatafiore, to three of the most important museums in Europe. It was also the year of the 39th Venice Biennale, where Harald Szeemann and Achille Bonito Oliva curated the Aperto section, choosing some of the artists who were to make their mark on the art scene for many years to come. It was here that Transavanguardia became more firmly established, with its theoretical structure being published the following year. The arrival of the young Italian painters was seen by many as a breath of fresh air and a key exhibition like ''Zeitgeist'', in Berlin, certainly indicated their progress, with German-speaking countries as the first to promote their work. Paladino's career, like those of his colleagues, has included considerable collaboration with artists, intellectuals and musicians, and yet, more than others, Paladino has always managed to appear with a form of creativity that is inquisitive and open, but always personal. He goes beyond the purely pictorial and, ever since 1983, he has strayed into sculpture (his first work, ''Closed Garden'', is now at Castello di Rivoli) and engraving. However, his basic conception is always pictorial, even when three-dimensional, as in the case of ''It Will Have No Title'', with the use of geometrical elements applied to the environment, the first result of which came in 1995. Painting, sculpture and engraving were the three media that most inspired his style throughout the following years and one might well assume that this is the ‘‘eminence” that Danto refers to, since it was clear that – like few other artists of the twentieth century – Paladino always revealed a different ambition in each discipline. In 1988 the critic Giovanni Carandente entrusted him with the main gallery in the Italian Pavilion at the 43rd Venice Biennale. Here Paladino showed an installation in which the management of space – created in part by a pictorial approach to sculpture – was of great impact. This type of approach returned in the early nineties in the ''Hortus Conclusus'' in Benevento, a garden in which architecture, the environment and objects all combined to form the work. These creations, which had a mysterious, “alchemical” air about them, emerged like apparitions, as constant epiphanies. This is an aspect that I find constantly in the work of this artist, who in 1994 was the first Italian to exhibit in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Here the views formed a complementary backdrop to the works on show, and this became a constant feature of all his urban projects. The ''Mountain of Salt'' dates from 1990. Originally created in Gibellina, it “appeared” in the Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples in 1995 and later, in 2011, in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, when the city dedicated a major retrospective to him on the ''piano nobile'' of the Palazzo Reale. The nineties was a time of great experimentation and it is no coincidence that the ''Mountain'' became its symbol. The new millennium, as well as bringing a large number of exhibitions in which he was the protagonist or a guest, also brought the use of video. In 2006 Paladino made his short feature film ''Quijote'', devoted to the work by Cervantes. Presented at the Venice Film Festival, the movie captures the essence of the art of the masterpiece in a highly imaginative series of evocations, sounds and inventions. Great literature is an underlying thread that, over the years, has led him to illustrate the icons of world culture, such as ''Tristes Tropiques'', ''Ulysses'', the Homeric poems, ''Pinocchio'' and, of course, ''Don Quixote''. Paladino was back behind the camera in 2013 to film ''Labyrinthus'' for the fourth centenary of the death of the madrigal composer Gesualdo da Venosa. Here too, his collaboration with the world of music goes back a long way, with numerous ''mises en scène'' for opera houses, the creation of opera posters for Maestro Riccardo Muti and requests for music for his installations, as was the case in 1999 with Brian Eno for ''Sleepers'', in London and then, in 2008, for the Ara Pacis in Rome. In 2013 he was commissioned to make a monumental installation for the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, where he used blocks of marble and bronze sculptures for a large temporary project (263 x 164 ft), creating a sort of enormous cross in which the public could move freely. Even though it is becoming difficult to list all his exhibitions and publications, what is important is the care with which Paladino achieves his artistic mission in the allotted space, as can be seen in his latest creation for the 55th Venice Biennale in 2015. Whether it is a painting, a piazza, the pages of a book, or the galleries of a museum, it is his all-embracing vision that makes each element a crucial component of a complex project. A project that always attempts to seize the opportunities rather than the limitations of the world. In 2016 He creates a large-scale exhibition for

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a botanical garden, art museum, and outdoor sculpture park located in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1995, Meijer Gardens quickly established itself in the Midwest as a major c ...

in Grand Rapids (MI), USA and a retrospective show at Galleria Stein, Milano (F. Arensi in J. Antonucci, Mimmo Paladino, Frederik Mejier Gardens & Sculpture Park, 2016) Paladino was made an honorary member of the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

, London on 26 May 1999. His work is in many public museum collections including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

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 ...

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 ...

, among others.

Personal life

Mimmo Paladino is married to Imma, and has one daughter and three grandchildren. He now lives in Rome and Milan, and Paduli but still has a studio in the little town near Benevento.

Time line

1948 Born 18 December in Paduli, near Benevento, east of Naples 1964 Visits the Venice Biennale where the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the American Pavilion makes a strong impression, revealing to him the ‘reality of art’ 1968 Completes his studies at the Liceo artistico di Benevento and within a year has participated in a group show in Naples. His early work uses photo-based imagery as well as showing an awareness of conceptual art: ‘…what I was really looking for was images. The frozen art, made with such a cold medium as the camera, certainly didn’t come naturally, and above all, I couldn’t have kept on making art along such a one-way track that excluded new possibilities’ Solo exhibition at the Galleria Carolina, Portici 1969 Solo exhibition at Enzo Cannaviello's Studio Oggetto, Caserta 1973 Begins combining images in mixed media, building up a complex iconography that takes account of ‘a terrible mixture of messages from cultures, strangely opposed and divergent, though mixed together’ 1977 Paints a seminal work that marks a shift towards painting at odds with current avant-garde practice: ‘I have always thought of my work as something which is on a borderline with risk. Even my first painting with an image came out in a moment when something of this kind was totally outside the idea of painting; and the title, not by chance, was ''Silence, I am retiring to paint a picture''’ Shows a large mural in tempera with Galleria Lucio Amelio in Naples The same year he moves to Milan 1978 First visit to New York 1980 Invited by the Neapolitan critic

Achille Bonito Oliva Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contempo ...

to show in the Aperto section of 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 ...

, together with

Sandro Chia Sandro Chia (born 20 April 1946) is an Italian painter and sculptor. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was, with Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino, a principal member of the Italian Neo-Expressionist movemen ...

Francesco Clemente Francesco Clemente (born 23 March 1952) is an Italian contemporary artist. He has lived at various times in Italy, India and New York City. Some of his work is influenced by the traditional art and culture of India. He has worked in various ar ...

Enzo Cucchi Enzo Cucchi (born 14 November 1949) is an Italian painter. A native of Morro d'Alba, province of Ancona, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with his countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, ...

, and

Nicola De Maria Nicola De Maria (born 6 December 1954 in Foglianise, Italy) is an Italian painter living and working in Torino, Italy. De Maria is known for his abstract figurative works, which have been characterized as lyrical and colourful. Biography De Maria ...

. Publication of the book-object ''EN DE RE'' in collaboration with Bonito Oliva (Emilio Mazzoli, Modena) Begins experimenting with etching, aquatint, lino-cuts and xylography 1981 Participates in ''A New Spirit in Painting'' at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, a major exhibition that is shown the following year at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, under the title ''Zeitgeist'' A major solo exhibition of drawings from the previous five years is organised by the Kunstmuseum, Basel. It travels to the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, the Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, and the Groninger Museum, Groningen, and launches Paladino as an international artistWorks on the first of four projects with the New York printmakers Harlan & Weaver 1982 Participates in the Sydney Biennale and in ''Documenta 7'', Kassel Realises his first sculpture in bronze, ''Giardino chiuso'' Makes the first of numerous visits to Brazil where his father is living 1984 Builds a house and studio in Paduli, near Benevento. From now on, divides his time between Paduli and his apartment in Milan Shows five recent works at the Newport Harbor Museum as part of ''Il Modo Italiano'', a survey of recent Italian art organized by the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art and held in several venues 1985 First retrospective exhibition is held at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. Realises the ''Pietre'', the first of several series of standing figures in white stone 1988 The Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale devotes a large central space to a massive sculptural work consisting of enigmatic graphic symbols attached to the walls and a group of bronze figures 1989 Designs a Swatch watch which is produced in an edition of 100. ‘The idea was not to decorate a watch, but to design time. My Swatch is like a humorous ''vanitas'', a poetic symbol of passing time that was industrially manufactured’ 1990 Commissioned by the theatre director Elio De Capitani to create a set for an open-air performance of the opera ''La sposa di Messina'', based on Friedrich Schiller's tragic drama, and staged at Gibellina in Sicily as part of the ''Orestiadi'' festival. Paladino devises a sculpture-environment to be seen by moonlight. It consists of a Zen garden made of raked gravel dominated by a mountain of salt from which emerge the charred forms of 30 wooden horses 1991 A major exhibition opens in Prague at the Belvedere, the royal castle that has been restored for the occasion; shows a cycle of seven new canvases inspired by the history of Prague, nine bronze torsos and works on paper. A sculpture of a fallen horse exhibited in a nearby piazza is removed after objections by a local bishop. Completes a new cycle of twelve paintings on wood, ''Il respiro della bellezza''. ‘I’ve always painted as though the canvas itself were a living organism, to create a living, curious, palpitating thing. When I was applying a brushstroke to one of these works, I realised that this gesture was like breathing, like the panting of a man’ 1992 Opening of ''Hortus Conclusus'', a permanent sculpture installation for the Chiostro di San Domenico at Benevento: ‘I liked the idea of a ''Hortus conclusus'' as a place for looking at and contemplating the work of art …outside the constraints of the art gallery’ The Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea in Trento holds a major exhibition of prints produced between 1970 and 1992 1993 Responds to the assassinations of two judges by the Sicilian Mafia, which also caused the deaths of many others, by painting seven large pictures ‘like a chorus, a requiem, which I then covered up with a coat of limestone wash (the same material used to bury the dead)’ Major solo exhibition at Forte Belvedere, Florence 1994 Invited to exhibit in Beijing, the first contemporary Italian artist to be shown there. Works in Bologna Publishes ''Ulysses, 16 June 1904'', 21 unnumbered etchings based on James Joyce's novel 1995 Participates in ''Reparations'', an exhibition of contemporary art held in the Sala delle Reali Poste in the west wing of the Uffizi to mark its restoration after that part of the building had been almost completely destroyed in a car-bomb blast in May 1993 1995–1996 Major solo exhibition in Naples, which is shown in three venues: the Scuderie di Palazzo Reale, the Piazza del Plebiscito and the Villa Pignatelli. Paladino's reconstruction of the ''Montagna di sale'' erected in the Piazza del Plebiscito is seen as a provocation and is vandalised early in the New Year 1998 Publishes ''Film'', a collection of 32 drawings (Squadro edizioni grafiche, Bologna) 1999 A major exhibition at the South London Gallery includes ''Testimoni'', a recently completed group of 20 standing figures in white Vicenza stone, and ''Zenith'', a series of mixed-media works on aluminium. Creates, as part of South London Gallery Projects, an installation ''I Dormienti'' in the brick-vaulted undercroft of the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm which is accompanied by a score written by Brian Eno. An exhibition of new prints opens at the Alan Cristea Gallery. Made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London 2000 His design for the set of ''Oedipus Rex'' at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, directed by Mario Martone, wins the UBU prize for stage design 2001 Illustrates Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', published in two volumes by Casa editrice Le Lettere, Florence Publication of catalogue raisonné of graphic works 1974–2001, ed. Enzo Di Martino (Art of this Century, New York/Paris) 2002–2003 Major retrospective held at the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato Represented together with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Nicola de Maria in ''Transavanguardia 1979-1985'' at Castello Di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin 2003 ''Zenith'' installed in the square of the European Parliament headquarters 2004 Works made in close collaboration with Sol Lewitt are displayed at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte in Rome As part of the project ''Terrae Motus'', has a solo show at the Reggia di Caserta 2004–2005 Touring Pinocchio exhibition is held at the modern art museums of six Japanese cities and at the eighteenth-century Scola dei Battioro in Venice 2005 ''Mimmo Paladino'' ''in Scena'' opens at the Loggetta Lombardesca in Ravenna. Statue ''Zenith'' exhibited at EXPO 2005 in Aichi, Japan An exhibition dedicated to the theme of Don Quixote by Cervantes opens in December at the Museo di Capodimonte, Naple 2006 ''Porta con Figura'' exhibited at the New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery at Roche Court, Salisbury Commissioned to re-design the Piazza dei Guidi at the new home of the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci 2009 ''Paladino: Sculpture 1980-2008'', written by Enzo Di Martino and Friedhelm Mennekes published by Skira 2011 ''Montagna del Sale'' (‘Mountain of Salt’) installed in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, as part of the celebrations to mark the anniversary of the unification of Italy. The installation has a diameter of 30 meters and a height of 20 meters Shortlisted for The Royal Academy of Arts, London Wollaston Award 2013 Exhibition in summer during the international Ravello Festival 2015 Again at the Venice Biennale with a great installation 2016 An important retrospective at the Galleria Christian Stein, Milan. 2016 ''Mimmo Paladino: Present into Past'' sculpture exhibition at

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a botanical garden, art museum, and outdoor sculpture park located in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1995, Meijer Gardens quickly established itself in the Midwest as a major c ...

, Grand Rapids, USA Paladino currently lives and works in Milan, Rome,

. 1^� A. Danto, "Mimmo Paladino. Transavanguardia to Meridionalism", in F. Arensi, ''Paladino Palazzo Reale'', exhibition catalogue, 2011, Giunti Editore, p. 35.

References

Bibliography

* Flavio Arensi, "Paladino at Palazzo Reale", with essays by Arthur Danto and Germano Celant, Firenze, Giunti, 2011 * Enzo Di Martino and Klaus Albrecht Schröder, ''Mimmo Paladino, Graphic Work 1974-2001'', New York, Rizzoli International Publications, 2002. *

Giancarlo Politi Giancarlo Politi (born 1937 in Trevi, Italy) is an art critic and publisher, mainly known for being the founder of ''Flash Art'' magazine. Magazine Politi was born in Trevi, in Umbria. He had a brief spell as an artist and poet before turning to ...

, ''Paladino: Lo Specchio'', Milan, Politi Editore, 1992. * Margaret Failoni, ''Mimmo Paladino'', Kyoto, Japan, Kyoto Shoin, 1990. *

Giovanni Testori Giovanni Testori (Novate Milanese, 12 May 1923 – Milan, 16 March 1993) was an Italian writer, journalist, poet, art and literary critic, dramatist, screenplay writer, theatrical director and painter. Biography Childhood and youth “It is ...

, ''Mimmo Paladino'', Brussels, Artiscope, 1989.

External links