Mimmo Rotella

Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella (Catanzaro, 7 October 1918 – Milan, 8 January 2006) was an Italian artist considered an important figure in post-war European art.

He was associated to the Ultra-Lettrists an offshoot of Lettrism and later was a member of the Nouveau Réalisme, founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany.

In 1949 he devoted himself to the phonetic poetry experiments, calling epistaltic (a meaningless neologism), which in the same year he draws up the Manifesto (published by L.Sinisgalli in "Civilization of machines") In 1951 he had his first contact with French art, exhibiting in Paris at the Salon des Nouvelles Réalités.

Between 1951 and 1952, he obtained the award of a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation, which allows him to travel to the US as an "Artist in Residence" at the University of Kansas City.

In the United States he had the opportunity to meet representatives of the new artistic currents: Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock and Yves Klein.

Now convinced that there is nothing to be done again in art, suddenly what he calls "Zen illumination": the discovery of the advertising poster as artistic expression of the city.

The curiosity of the public for the artist's extravagances, culminated in 1960 with the creation, the work of Enzo Nasso, a short film dedicated to angry Painters, which cure Rotella spoken commentary.

Also in 1960 he joined the New Realism - but he didn't sign the manifesto - theorist of which Pierre Restany and bringing together, among others, Yves Klein, Spoerri, Tinguely, César, Arman and Christo.

Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, with the Informal and the spatial and material research in those years, Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri taking place in Italy, they play an important role in the orientation of Rotella.

In the early seventies produces some works by intervening on the advertising pages of magazines with the use of solvents and reducing or state at the imprint (frottage) or deleting one (effaçage).

It drew anonymous writings, such as those that can be read on city walls: love notes and political slogans, etc., in a double message.

The retro d'affiche are displayed for the first time to the public in December 1955 at the personal exhibition the artist held at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan.

Unlike decollage where often textural layers are wrapped together and manipulated, in the back of posters the artist retains the "urban relic".