Décollage
inch 12.60 x 19.69 / cm 32×50
1960
NOTES: Archived number: 2257 DC 960/960 by Fondazione Mimmo Rotella
LITERATURE: G. Celant, Mimmo Rotella. Catalogo ragionato. Volume primo 1944-1961. Tomo II, Skira, Milano, 2016, ill. pag. 674 n°039.
Discover the video of the artwork (right-click on the link and select “open link in another browser window”) https://youtube.com/shorts/6iCcWLUXyWo?si=JhjN6DKQwA2Tkm00
These two works by Mimmo Rotella are a décollage and a rétro d’affiche: both use advertising posters, one the front of the poster, with the colored part in the foreground, the other the back, which highlights the material aspect. Rotella began painting abstract pictures, first in Catanzaro where he was born, then in post-war Rome, but after a stay in the United States he felt that his work had reached a dead end, that there was nothing left to invent. It was the city, with its walls covered in the 1950s with torn and layered advertising, film, and political posters, that suggested a new language to him, one that was immediate, powerful, and contemporary. Movie stars were the characters of the new myths, consumer products the new idols of mass society. Rotella tore posters from the walls at night and used them as ready-mades with which he created compositions, or left the back exposed, poor and raw like a Burri sack. His works used contemporary icons, transforming them, through tearing, into timeless images.