Mimmo Rotella
(Catanzaro, 1918 – Milan, 2006)
Mimmo Rotella was born in Catanzaro in 1918. He studied fine arts between Naples and Rome until he was called up for military service in 1942. He was able to return in Rome only in 1945 and, after his figurative beginnings and early experiments, he began to paint neo-geometric pictures. In 1951 Rotella had his first solo exhibition at Galleria Chiurazzi and, in the same year, he is an “Artist in Residence” at the University of Kansas City, thanks to a scholarship program. In 1953 he came back to Rome, where he started tearing off advertising posters, meant as artistic expression of the city, and pasting them on canvas, creating his iconic décollages. At the end of the 1950s, Rotella was labeled by critics as a “poster tearer”. Dismembering the image, Rotella focused on imperfections, exalting the fraction and its singularity. During the 60s he moved to Paris and he started using cinema affiches depicting famous Hollywood icons as main subjects for his artworks. In 1970 he participated at the “Festival of the New Realism” in Milan, with international artists such as Christo, Arman, Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle. When he moved to Milan, in the 1980s, he developed the Blanks series: zeroed-out advertising posters, covered with white sheets, like expired advertising. In 1992, he was awarded the title of Officiel des arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang. Mimmo Rotella Foundation opened in 2000 to gather the artist’s catalogs and artworks and to preserve the memory of his documented artistic career. Rotella died in Milan in January 2006.
Among his solo and group exhibition, we can mention: Quadriennale d’Arte, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome, 1956-1966); Rotella. Recent Collages, Institute of Contemporary Art (London, 1957); The Art of Assemblage, Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1961); Vitalità del negativo nell'arte italiana 1960/70, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome, 1970); Arte Italiana del XX secolo, Royal Academy of Arts (London, 1989); The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1994); Art and film since 1945. Hall of Mirrors, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, 1996); Face à l’Historie, Centre Pompidou (Paris, 1996); Mimmo Rotella: Rétrospective, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (Nice, 1999); Mimmo Rotella: Avenue Rotella, Museum Tinguely (Basel, 2005); Mimmo Rotella. Décollages e retro d’affiches, Palazzo Reale (Milan, 2014); Mimmo Rotella Manifesto, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (Rome, 2018).
