Page 39 - The MoMA/ Guggenheim issue of World of Art magazine (2003)

MIMMo PalaDiNo

The Luigi pecci Centre for Contemporary art of
prato is devoting a major exhibition to the intense, SeNza TiTolo (STella)
2001 FuSIoN oN aLuMINuM
multifaceted work of the painter, sculptor, printmaker CM 160x155x175
and illustrator Mimmo paladino. CourTeSy oF GaLLerIa ChrISTIaN STeIN, MILaNo
phoTo By MaNISCaLCo, MILaNo
Based on an original project by the artist and the
museum’s director Bruno Corà, the show traces
the main cycles of paladino’s work from 1977
up to now, through 100 of his most significant
works: paintings, sculptures and installations,
besides drawings, small bronze sculptures and
illustrated books.
Mimmo paladino (b. 1948, paduli, Benevento)
is a prominent figure on today’s international
ad scene.
In the second half of the 70s he rediscovered
figuration and reclaimed color, in terms both of
its expressive value and its pigment materiality; his
interest lay above all in the tendency of the figurative
to become language. he produced a succession of
abstract and oneiric figurative forms interspersed
with large, expressively-colored canvases, headed
by geometric structures, branches and masks that
envelop the viewer in suggestive atmospheres.
Sculpture is a fundamental part of paladino’s work,
as demonstrated by a number of beautiful works in
the show — bronze and aluminium casts, pieces in
wood (often painted), but also in copper, iron, steel
and other materials. despite their apparent fixity,
paladino’s works always preserve a densely-allusive
intensity. The masks with no gaze and the archaic
profiles of heads contain shades of meaning that
elude a single interpretation, but appear rather
to be resonant with allusions and deliberately
unfathomable enigmas and mysteries.
In the second half of the 80s, paladino’s works were alFoNSo oSSorio
FuLL MoTher (1951)
based on a compositional practice that became oLIo e SMaLTo Su TeLa CM. 129,5 x 96,52
gradually simpler. The inventory of signs became CourTeSy oF MIChaeL roSeNFeLd GaLLery, New yorK
more limited, while color was used to suggest
the entire space of the work: just a few attributes
sufficed to delineate the entire structure.The
personal room produced by the artist for the
43rd Venice Biennale has been reconstructed for
the first time since 1988.
at the end of the 90s, paladino produced a number
of series of paintings in which the knottiest aspect
of his work became evident, namely the constant
questioning of the language of art. Some of the major
threads of his work are geometry, fragmentation,
the multiplicity and accumulation of signs, combined arSHile gorky
with sudden pauses and shifts in register. GayLordSVILLe (1937)
oLIo Su TeLa CM 55,8 x 45,9
CoLLezIoNe prIVaTay
Finally the exhibition presents the previously
unshown series of New york (made after Sept.
11, 2001) and of Negatives (2002): large painted
compositions combined with objects or dominated
by monochrome backgrounds on canvas.
The show also makes use of other spaces in the
museum, where there are a number of large-scale
sculptures in iron, bronze and aluminum, a wide
selection of drawings and small-scale bronze
sculptures, a display of various illustrated books
that testify to paladino’s interest in art prints and
some videos about his work.

The exhibition is accompanied by a complete SciamaNo (Ta-Ta-Ta-Pe-Pe-Pe-Trum-Trum-Trum)
catalogue of the works in the show, together with 1997 oIL oN CaNVaS
an extensive record of paladino’s work. published CM 110 x 90
by Gli ori, prato. CoLLeCTIoN. e h. BaTLINer
phoTo By STudIo heINz preuTe, Vaduzy
World of art 37