Mimmo Paladino ^©  

(1948)

Signed M. Paladino at lower right

Oil, gouache and collages of cardboard on canvas applied on panel in wooden frame

Provenance:
Artiscope Gallery, Bruxelles;
Private collection;
Christie’s Milan, 2009;
Private collection, Rome

Artwork registered at the Archivio Mimmo Paladino, Paduli (BN) with number MP P84 053

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«Paladino’s painting would like to evoke the ghosts that return to obsess the visible; his painting would like to make shadows coexist with life, would like to prolong the nocturnal in the space of luminous images: "You can not love the darkness where there is the glitter of the sea" (Mimmo Paladino). Yet he knows that every step will have been an unpredictable adventure, a matter of life and death. He presents himself as a tightrope walker: "I have always felt closer to the image produced by a tightrope walker rather than that of an academic artist" (Mimmo Paladino).
(From John Sallis, "Antichissime memorie. Le immagini recondite di Mimmo Paladino", 2014)

Mimmo Paladino (Paduli, 1948) is one of the main exponents of the Trans-avant-garde movement and draws inspiration from a wide range of themes and stylistic registers, in particular from Egyptian, Etruscan, Roman and Early Christian art, Understanding art as a timeless creation that generates in the observer thought and knowledge. His language is not illustrative, not narrative, but figurative; the image arises from the proliferation and stratification of signs and materials: the surface is covered with successive layers of chalk and color, pure, material, and create tangles and fragments of signs and symbols that sometimes declare a meaning, sometimes allude to other, sometimes hide. (From "Mimmo Paladino", curated by Luciano Carotenuto, "Arte in Campania", 2022).

Starting from the eighties, Paladino’s works are based on compositions characterized by violent strokes and bright colors: this is the case of the work presented here, dated 1984, considered one of the most important periods in his artistic production. In this work we follow abstract and dreamlike signs with strong timbre values; the color suggests the entire space of the work: a few attributes are enough to outline the whole structure. The features and shapes with elegant and simplified signs and color are recovered in their expressive recovery. Despite their apparent simplicity expressed by the icons represented, Paladino’s works always retain an ambiguity dense of allusions, whose signs like an unknown alphabet are still waiting to be fully deciphered and understood.