Mimmo Paladino

In 1977 came his first collaboration with Lucio Amelio, the historic gallery owner in Naples, and two years later he put on his first exhibition with another key gallerist, Emilio Mazzoli of Modena, for whom he made his first book-object – En-De-Re – in 1980.

The arrival of the young Italian painters was seen by many as a breath of fresh air and a key exhibition like Zeitgeist, in Berlin, certainly indicated their progress, with German-speaking countries as the first to promote their work.

Painting, sculpture and engraving were the three media that most inspired his style throughout the following years and one might well assume that this is the ‘‘eminence” that Danto refers to, since it was clear that – like few other artists of the twentieth century – Paladino always revealed a different ambition in each discipline.

Great literature is an underlying thread that, over the years, has led him to illustrate the icons of world culture, such as Tristes Tropiques, Ulysses, the Homeric poems, Pinocchio and, of course, Don Quixote.

In 2013 he was commissioned to make a monumental installation for the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, where he used blocks of marble and bronze sculptures for a large temporary project (263 x 164 ft), creating a sort of enormous cross in which the public could move freely.

Even though it is becoming difficult to list all his exhibitions and publications, what is important is the care with which Paladino achieves his artistic mission in the allotted space, as can be seen in his latest creation for the 55th Venice Biennale in 2015.

The frozen art, made with such a cold medium as the camera, certainly didn’t come naturally, and above all, I couldn’t have kept on making art along such a one-way track that excluded new possibilities’ Solo exhibition at the Galleria Carolina, Portici 1969 Solo exhibition at Enzo Cannaviello's Studio Oggetto, Caserta 1973 Begins combining images in mixed media, building up a complex iconography that takes account of ‘a terrible mixture of messages from cultures, strangely opposed and divergent, though mixed together’ 1977 Paints a seminal work that marks a shift towards painting at odds with current avant-garde practice: ‘I have always thought of my work as something which is on a borderline with risk.

Publication of the book-object EN DE RE in collaboration with Bonito Oliva (Emilio Mazzoli, Modena) Begins experimenting with etching, aquatint, lino-cuts and xylography 1981 Participates in A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, a major exhibition that is shown the following year at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, under the title Zeitgeist A major solo exhibition of drawings from the previous five years is organised by the Kunstmuseum, Basel.

My Swatch is like a humorous vanitas, a poetic symbol of passing time that was industrially manufactured’ 1990 Commissioned by the theatre director Elio De Capitani to create a set for an open-air performance of the opera La sposa di Messina, based on Friedrich Schiller's tragic drama, and staged at Gibellina in Sicily as part of the Orestiadi festival.

When I was applying a brushstroke to one of these works, I realised that this gesture was like breathing, like the panting of a man’ 1992 Opening of Hortus Conclusus, a permanent sculpture installation for the Chiostro di San Domenico at Benevento: ‘I liked the idea of a Hortus conclusus as a place for looking at and contemplating the work of art …outside the constraints of the art gallery’ The Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea in Trento holds a major exhibition of prints produced between 1970 and 1992 1993 Responds to the assassinations of two judges by the Sicilian Mafia, which also caused the deaths of many others, by painting seven large pictures ‘like a chorus, a requiem, which I then covered up with a coat of limestone wash (the same material used to bury the dead)’ Major solo exhibition at Forte Belvedere, Florence 1994 Invited to exhibit in Beijing, the first contemporary Italian artist to be shown there.

Works in Bologna Publishes Ulysses, 16 June 1904, 21 unnumbered etchings based on James Joyce's novel 1995 Participates in Reparations, an exhibition of contemporary art held in the Sala delle Reali Poste in the west wing of the Uffizi to mark its restoration after that part of the building had been almost completely destroyed in a car-bomb blast in May 1993 1995–1996 Major solo exhibition in Naples, which is shown in three venues: the Scuderie di Palazzo Reale, the Piazza del Plebiscito and the Villa Pignatelli.

Paladino's reconstruction of the Montagna di sale erected in the Piazza del Plebiscito is seen as a provocation and is vandalised early in the New Year 1998 Publishes Film, a collection of 32 drawings (Squadro edizioni grafiche, Bologna) 1999 A major exhibition at the South London Gallery includes Testimoni, a recently completed group of 20 standing figures in white Vicenza stone, and Zenith, a series of mixed-media works on aluminium.

Creates, as part of South London Gallery Projects, an installation I Dormienti in the brick-vaulted undercroft of the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm which is accompanied by a score written by Brian Eno.

Statue Zenith exhibited at EXPO 2005 in Aichi, Japan An exhibition dedicated to the theme of Don Quixote by Cervantes opens in December at the Museo di Capodimonte, Naple 2006 Porta con Figura exhibited at the New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery at Roche Court, Salisbury Commissioned to re-design the Piazza dei Guidi at the new home of the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci 2009 Paladino: Sculpture 1980-2008, written by Enzo Di Martino and Friedhelm Mennekes published by Skira 2011 Montagna del Sale (‘Mountain of Salt’) installed in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, as part of the celebrations to mark the anniversary of the unification of Italy.