Mimmo Rotella, Ventimila anni avanti Christo, 1956, 1986, Silkscreen on cloth, 260 × 120 cm
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Domenico “Mimmo” Rotella (1918 Catanzaro, Italy – 2006 Milan, Italy) was an Italian artist and part of the European Nouveau Réalisme movement. In Rome, Rotella came into contact with exponents of the Italian Forma 1 group and the geometries of abstractionism and Post-Cubism. Parallel to a growing interest in painting, he became interested in phonetic or “epistaltica” poetry, chanting compositions of invented and interwoven sounds. Strongly influenced by Pop Art, Neo-Dada, and experiments of Ultra Lettrism from 1954 onwards, he created his first décollages, eventually tying in Nouveau Réalisme from the 1960s onward. Addressing the relentless pace of advertising communication, Rotella’s décollages are composed of torn posters from city walls. Rotella’s works have been featured in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art and Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1961 and 1962 respectively, as well as at the 1964 Biennale di Venezia. Living between Milan, Paris, and New York, Rotella also engaged in photography and photomontage dedicating himself to poetry by taking part in the event Poésie Action/Poésie Sonore 1955–1975, organized by the poet Bernard Heidsieck in Paris in 1976. Rotella’s works have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art (1990) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1996), both in New York. Retrospectives have been held at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (2003), the Museum Tinguely in Basel (2005), and the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome (2019).
