Paladino Mimmo

In the second half of the 1970s, Paladino rediscovered painting and recovered colour both in its expressive value and in the materiality of pigment The years between 1978 and 1980 were years of transition between the conceptual position of the first phase and the renewed focus on figurative painting; the works produced in this period are mainly monochrome paintings with strong colours on which geometric structures and found objects such as branches or masks stand out, and the techniques experimented with are diverse, from drawing to painting, sculpture, mosaic, engraving and filmic images
In these years, in the context of the Venice Biennial, the art critic Achille Bonito Oliva used the term Transavanguardia to define the current to which Chia, Clemente, Cucchi and Paladino himself belonged, artists who drew from the past and from pictorial traditions that were also very different and distant, and created a hybrid language, capable of bringing together different epochs Paladino, of all of them, is the most essential artist, closest to German primitivism and expressionism of the early 20th century; his painting is indebted to the past in terms of content and form, but at the same time it is dense with symbols and capable of opening up to new perspectives Since 1985 he has produced large bronze sculptures and installations, thus experimenting with the contamination of different forms of expression: in their apparent icon-like fixity, Paladino’s works always retain an ambiguity dense with allusions The masks without a gaze, the archaic profiles of the heads, hold emblematic values that elude unambiguous interpretation These elements turn out to be references to various primitive cultures, and one can recognise inspirations taken from iconographies of early Christian, Egyptian and Etruscan art: references typical of the local culture of Brazil and South America, which the artist visited in 1982 In the second half of the 1980s, Paladino’s works are based on a simplifying composition The inventory of signs is narrowed down, while colour suggests the entire space of the work: a few attributes are sufficient to outline its entire structure For the first time since 1988, a large part of the solo room realised by the artist at the XLIII Venice Biennale can be observed reconstructed
At the end of the 1990s, Paladino realised several more painting cycles, in which the most problematic aspect of his research, ie the continuous questioning of the language of art, becomes evident: geometry, fragmentariness, multiplicity and the accumulation of signs, together with sudden caesuras and changes of register, constitute some of the guiding threads of his work In 1995, Paladino became the protagonist of Piazza Plebiscito, creating his memorable Montagna di sale (Salt Mountain) as a confluence of his works simultaneously exhibited at the Pignatelli Museum and the Scuderie di Palazzo Reale: chromatic vibrations, large colour fields, sculptural installations, animal and human forms, and horses tipped over on salt still remain in the memory His production also began to be known abroad, thanks to a travelling exhibition in 1980, which travelled from Basel to Essen and Amsterdam, as well as a solo exhibition at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe In 1981, he participated in the exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy of Art in London The Kunstmuseum in Basel and the Kestner-Gesellshaft in Hanover organised an exhibition of drawings made from 1976 to 1981 It was also shown at the Kestner-Gesellshaft in Hannover at the Mannheimer Kunstverein in Mannheim and at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, which launched Paladino as an international artist In 1982 he participated in Documenta in Kassel In 1990 he realised the set design for Schiller’s The Bride of Messina in Gibellina directed by Elio Capitani and in 1992 he created the permanent installation Hortus conclusus in the university complex of San Domenico in Benevento In the following years he devoted himself more intensively to art publishing and concentrated on materials such as ceramics and terracotta In 2003 Paladino was chosen as the representative of Italian art during the Italian presidency in Brussels: the equestrian sculpture Zenith is installed in the square of the European Parliament building In 2011, a large retrospective was set up in the Palazzo Reale in Milan, tracing the last forty years of the Campania master’s career, and the following year the artist published with art critic C D’Orazio the book Ritratti romani In 2015, he designed the statue La conoscenza (Knowledge), presented at Expo Milano, on the occasion of the celebrations for the 90th anniversary of the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani (Treccani Italian Encyclopaedia Institute), while in 2017 he created the new sacred vestments for the Rucellai Chapel in the former San Pancrazio church complex in Florence You can admire his works in the Museo Napoli Novecento 1910-1980 Per un museo in progress in Naples, in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples and in the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE) in Naples, as well as in Rome in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, in Bologna in the MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and in Cagliari, in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna The installation Montagna di sale (1990) was permanently brought to Baglio Di Stefano, an architectural complex housing the Orestiadi Foundation in Gibellina, in the province of Trapani Finally, works by Paladino are also kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York