Mimmo Paladino, life and works of the Transavantgarde artist

Domenico Paladino, known as Mimmo (Paduli, 1948), is an Italian painter, sculptor and printmaker known for being one of the main exponents of the Transavanguardia movement and for having created large-scale installations placed in several Italian cities. His style is recognizable by the presence of elements inferred from different cultures such as masks, animals, hands and heads. The artist is well known abroad, where numerous solo exhibitions have been dedicated to him.

The movement of which he is a member, the Transavanguardia, was born in the early 1980s: founded by art critic Achille Bonito Oliva, the group consisted of Enzo Cucchi, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino himself. Common to their individual experiences is the desire to draw from the past and from even very different and distant pictorial traditions to create a hybrid language capable of bringing together different epochs, in a way that could be called trans-historical (hence the name). Of the group, Mimmo Paladino is the most essential artist, closest to early 20th-century German primitivism and expressionism.

The Life of Mimmo Paladino

Mimmo Paladino was born in Paduli, a town near Benevento, Campania, on December 18, 1948. He began to approach the arts through his paternal uncle Antonio, a painter, and enrolled in the Liceo Artistico in Benevento. He attended Lucio Amelio’s Gallery in Naples, where he met the painter Antonio Del Donno, and together they visited the Venice Biennale, becoming fascinated by Pop Art. Paladino exhibited for the first time in 1968 at Galleria Carolina in Portici, near Naples, where he was introduced by the art critic Achille Bonito Oliva. In fact, the acquaintance between the two dates back to this period, which turned into a stable union over time as Bonito Oliva would introduce Paladino on several other occasions and write extensively about him. Initially, Paladino began to move into the field of photography, using this technique for conceptual experimentation going full circle with the trend of the time. He also tried his hand at collage, thus mastering different techniques.

Shortly afterwards, the artist decided to leave Campania and moved to Milan in the 1970s, a lively city from an artistic point of view where he easily got to know the latest innovations. Here, in fact, he came into contact with new trends that anticipated the return to figurative art, after a long period characterized by the prevalence of conceptual art. In particular, his participation in the International Triennale für Zeichnung exhibition in Breslau would be a turning point toward the revival of Italian figurativism. Meanwhile, Paladino remained fascinated by drawing on walls and, in the second half of the 1970s, made murals in Naples (for the Lucio Amelio Gallery where he had first exhibited) and Milan. In the second mural, in particular, some elements begin to appear that will be characteristic of Paladino’s work, such as some masks on a flat one-color backdrop.

Meanwhile, Paladino’s interest in drawing also leads him to devote himself to painting, and this is how his collaboration with the Transavanguardia group begins. Paladino is included as an exponent of the group in their official presentation, which took place in 1980 within the Venice Biennale with the exhibition Aperto 80. This was followed in the same year by a traveling solo exhibition that touched several cities (including Basel and Amsterdam), a solo show at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, and his first exhibition in New York. His success not only in Italy, but also internationally, was thus consecrated. Between 1981 and 1982 he continued a relentless exhibition activity in exhibitions and galleries in several cities, both European and American. His solo exhibitions were organized in Germany (Berlin, Basel and Hannover), Bologna, London, Milan, Sydney, Paris, Naples, Rome, Zurich and many others. In 1994 he became the first contemporary Italian artist to hold a solo exhibition in China.

Paladino is an artist of great curiosity who experiments with various techniques that are also very different from each other. In the 1980s he tried his hand at the technique of engraving, in collaboration with other artists such as Giorgio Upiglio and Alberto Serighelli, achieving remarkable results. He produced several object books and artist’s books, including EN DE RE (1980) and others, until the 2000s. He also made stage sets for theatrical performances, concerts and various types of events.

But above all, his sculptures and installations, permanent or temporary, are renowned, which also flow into the architectural sphere in collaboration with great Italian architects, including Roberto Serino in the 1980s and Renzo Piano in the 2000s. Finally, he was also director of the feature film Quijote (2006) made as part of a macro project dedicated to the figure of Don Quixote, whose protagonists include singer Lucio Dalla. Paladino has received numerous honors: among others, he is Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts and Ordinary Academician of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca. In 2008 he received an Honorary Doctorate in Architecture from USI - University of Italian Switzerland, and in 2021 an Honorary Degree in Visual Arts from the University of Bologna Alma Mater Studiorum.

The style and works of Mimmo Paladino

Mimmo Paladino’s works are important for Italian art in that they are located in a relevant phase of transition from more conceptual art, in which form is rarely present in favor of more abstract representations, to a gradual return to the figure. Paladino’s own artistic production shows this transition occurring towards the end of the 1970s. The element that makes Paladino’s work immediately recognizable turns out to be the use of vivid, pure colors, which form the background of the composition or are directly part of it, and the recurrence of specific elements rendered in a stylized way, such as animals (particularly the horse), heads, and hands. These elements turn out to be references to various primitive-like cultures, and inspirations drawn from iconographies of early Christian, Egyptian, and Etruscan art are recognized. Some trips to Brazil and South America made in 1982 help the artist increase the range of references as he became fascinated by the local culture, steeped in primitive animism.

In 1983, in parallel with his continued exhibition activity around the world, both in solo and group shows together with other Transavantgarde artists, the artist decided to set up in his hometown of Paduli a housing complex of great environmental impact, consisting of sculptures and objects scattered along the territory and acting as a glue between his home and some workshops. He realized the project together with architect Roberto Serino. The collaboration with Serino would continue on two occasions. The first in 1987, as part of a project coordinated by Alessandro Pomodoro for the reconstruction of the church in Gibellina, destroyed after a devastating earthquake in 1968. The second for the creation of a statue for the city of Benevento, which would later be inaugurated in 1992.

In the 1990s, Paladino made series of installations placed on urban spaces, the most famous of which is Salt Mountain (1990). The work consists of wooden horses (identical to those usually seen in Paladino’s paintings) arranged standing or lying on a mock salt mountain made of concrete, fiberglass, and crushed stone. Initially, this work was to be part of the set design for a performance of Friedrich Schiller’s The Bride of Messina, but then it was duplicated and installed temporarily in Piazza Plebiscito in Naples (1995) and in Piazza Duomo in Milan (2011).

In the 2000s, in addition to also ranging in the field ofpublishing (he produced other books and was responsible for some illustrations for new editions of The Iliad and The Odyssey published by the publishing house “La lettera” in Florence) starting in 2004 Paladino is involved on projects of a varied nature and large scale throughout Italy. In 2004 he made the doors of the new church of Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo, fitting into the project designed by Renzo Piano. In 2006 he began a project on Don Quixote, including an exhibition with paintings, sculptures and a film and continuing with new illustrations and an artist’s book. In 2008 he created The Door of Lampedusa, a large terracotta and iron door, a monument dedicated to the memory of migrants who died at sea while attempting to reach Italian shores fleeing their conflict-torn countries of origin. In 2010 he was asked to create the sets for the series of concerts by singers Lucio Dalla and Francesco de Gregori (reunited in a joint project thirty years after their first collaboration). In 2011 he created the design for the new hall housing the 6th-century B.C. sculpture The Warrior of Capestrano for the Villa Frigerij Museum in Chieti, while in 2012 he designed the lighting for the stage of the “Notte della Taranta” in Melpignano (Le). Instead, the curtain for the Teatro Regio in Parma is from 2021.

Where to see Paladino’s works

Some of Paladino’s works are on permanent display in several Italian museums. You can admire them in Naples, in the Museo Napoli Novecento 1910-1980. For a museum in progress in Naples, in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples and in the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE) in Naples.

Other works are 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 that is the headquarters of the Orestiadi Foundation located in Gibellina, in the province of Trapani. Finally, works by Paladino are also preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Mimmo Paladino, life and works of the Transavantgarde artist

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