Mimmo Rotella - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Mimmo Rotella is a Artiste plastics technician Italy N, born the October 7th 1918 with Catanzaro (Calabria) and dead the January 8th 2006 with Milan.

Biography

Wire of a modiste, Mimmo Rotella leaves for Naples at the end of its years college and undertakes studies of Article It settles with Rome in 1941, after having found an employment with the ministry for the Stations and Télécommunications, but is soon called up for the military service and integrates the school of the officer cadets of Nocera then the school of the warrant officers of Caserte. It leaves in 1944 and obtains there its diploma of the artistic college of Naples. Between 1944 and 1945, it teaches the drawing at the Institute of the geometricians of Catanzaro.

In 1945, it returns to Rome and undertakes a career of painter. After figurative beginnings, it works out a pictorial mode of expression of neo-geometrical origin. It exposes in 1947 to the Trade-union Exposure of Representational Arts and takes part in all the annual exposures of Art Club until in 1951, as well in Rome as with Turin. It obtains its first personal exposure in 1951 to the Chiurazzi Gallery in Rome: it presents to it abstract and geometrical works, which are appreciated little by the critic.

In 1949, in the search of an alternative mode of expression, it invents a poetry which it names “epistaltic”, continuation of private words of direction, whistles, sounds, numbers and onomatopoeias, and publishes its compositions in the Manifesto , published by Leonardo Sinisgalli, in its number “Civiltà delle Macchine” in 1955.

Rotella establishes a first contact with the French artists exposing to Paris with the Salon of New Realities in 1951. In 1951 - 1952, thanks to a grant of Fullbright Foundation, it goes to the the United States as artist in residence to the university of Kansas City, where it carries out a great mural composition and is tried to accompany by percussions his phonetic poems. It devotes to a performance phonetic poetry with the Université of Harvard to Boston and records of them others for the Bibliothèque of the Congress of Washington DC. It also presents its second personal exposure to Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Kansas City (1952). During its stay, it becomes acquainted with artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. Later on, it meets in Rome, in 1960, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

Returned to Rome in 1953, it crosses one long period of crisis, during which it ceases painting, convinced that in art, all was already done. It leaves there thanks to what it calls a “illumination Zen”: the discovery of the advertizing poster like artistic means of expression and message of the city. It starts to stick on the fabric of the pieces of torn posters and exposes for the first time its posters lacerated in 1955, at the time of a “Exposure of current art” in Rome. Its work exploits “double takeoff” (posts torn off from its support then torn in workshop) and the backs of posters. With the series Cinecittà (1958), he works on the posters of cinema from which he insulates faces and silouhettes.

Its work is recognized and rewarded in 1956 by the Graziano price, and in 1957 by the Battistoni price and for the State education. Criticism locates its work of “puller of posters” and greets it like one of the representatives of the “young Roman painting”. Carrying out a life of Bohemia, it is made known also by its extravagances. In 1962, it off gives conferences to the New York School Visual Arts and, in 1964, it is invited to the Biennale de Venise.

Friend of the Critic art Pierre Restany since this one had come to visit him to Rome in 1958, it adheres to the movement Nouveau Realism in 1960, although it did not sign the Manifeste officially. In 1961, it takes part in the exposure “40° to the top of Dada”, organized in Paris by Restany.

Rotella settles in Paris, where it works out a process of series production thanks to the projection of images into negative on the emulsified fabric, work which it calls Reportage or Guy-art (1965). Using typographical products, it realizes between 1967 and 1973, the art-typo , tests freely reproduced on fabric. With this process, he has fun to superimpose and tangle up the advertizing images. “I reversed my old way of proceeding: initially I sought to disintegrate, now I try to reinstate this matter, this reality. ” At the beginning of the Years 1960, it carries out some interventions on the advertizing pages of the reviews by means of solvent, reducing them or to the state of print (friction) or while making disappear (deleting). In 1975, it imagines the plastiformes , pieces of torn off posters stuck on three-dimensional polyurethane supports. Another experiment, during the same period, consists with froisser of the posters and to lock up them in plexiglass cubes.

In 1972, it publishes a daring autobiography entitled Autorotella . In 1975, it leaves the first Italian disc phonetic poetries, presented by Alfredo Todisco. In 1976, it takes part in the international recital of Poetry Sound-Poetry Action to the workshop Annick the Monk.

Rotella is reinstalled with Milan in 1980. In the Years 1980, it works out the blanks or covers of posters starting from advertizing posters unobtrusive or covered with white sheets. In 1984, it takes again its acrylic brushes and its colors to carry out a second cycle of works dedicated to the cinema: Cinecittà 2 . In 1986, it exposes to Cuba at the University of Havana and carries out on this occasion a performance of laceration of posters on the place of the city. During the same year, it gives conferences to the Domus Academy in Milan.

It carries out on-paintings ( sovrapitture ) while intervening pictorially on advertizing posters torn and stuck on fabric and metal support, on which it traces signs which point out the graffiti (1987). In 1997, it carries out the cycle Felliniana , in homage to the scenario writer Federico Fellini.

In 1990, Rotella takes part, with the Center Georges-Pompidou in Paris, with the exposure “Art and Pub” and to the Museum off Modern Art of New York to the exposure “High and Low”. In 1991, it marries a young Russian economist, Inna Agarounova, of which it has a girl, Asya. It is made officer of the Arts and Lettres in France (1992).

It is invited to the Musée Guggenheim of New York in 1994 for “Italian Metamorphosis”, then again at the Center Pompidou in 1996 in “Vis-a-vis the History”, and with the Museum off Contemporary Art of Los Angeles at the time of the expo “Halls off Mirrors”. In 1996, the inauguration of one of its exposures is retransmise one line on Internet.

In 1999, the mayor of its birthplace, Sergio Abramo, takes a local by-law authorizing it to freely tear off the posters on the territory of Catanzaro.

External bonds

Official site of Mimmo Rotella

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