Mimmo Paladino
Born in Paduli (Benevento), in 1948. Moving from the common climate of the conceptual, the first phase of the artist's activity focuses mainly on photography.
His first solo show was held at Enzo Cannaviello's Studio Object in Caserta, in 1969; in 1977 he made a large pastel on the wall of the Lucio Amelio gallery in Naples and then moved to Milan. In the second half of the 70s, painting and color recovered both in its expressive value and in the materiality of the pigment: his interest was concentrated above all on the peculiarity of figuration to become language. Abstract and dreamlike images follow one another on large strong canvases
timbral values, spatially defined by geometric structures, branches and masks that attract the observer. In 1980 he comes to the development of large surfaces and works of strong visual impact in which he tells the life and the mystery of death, also introducing sculpted elements into the canvases.
In 1980 he was the founder of the Italian trans-avant-garde movement with Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Sandro Chia, Nicola de Maria: with this group he participated in the Venice Biennale this year.
Furthermore, since 1985 he has been experimenting with large bronze sculptures and installations, thus experimenting with the contamination between different expressive forms.
At the end of the nineties he creates several other pictorial cycles, in which he questions the language of art: geometry, fragmentation, multiplicity and accumulation of signs, together with sudden caesuras and changes of register, are the characteristics of his operates in recent years.
In 1995 he created the famous Salt Mountain in Piazza Plebiscito in Naples.
He lives and works in Benevento and Milan.
