Mimmo Paladino

Mimmo Paladino is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker.

1948 Born 18 December in Paduli, near Benevento, east of Naples

1964 Visits the Venice Biennale where the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the American Pavilion makes a strong impression, revealing to him the ‘reality of art’

1968 Completes his studies at the Liceo artistico di Benevento and within a year has participated in a group show in Naples. His early work uses photo-based imagery as well as showing an awareness of conceptual art: ‘…what I was really looking for was images. 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. Even my first painting with an image came out in a moment when something of this kind was totally outside the idea of painting; and the title, not by chance, was Silence, I am retiring to paint a picture’

Shows a large mural in tempera with Galleria Lucio Amelio in Naples

The same year he moves to Milan

1978 First visit to New York

1980 Invited by the Neapolitan critic Achille Bonito Oliva to show in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale, together with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Nicola De Maria

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. It travels to the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, the Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, and the Groninger Museum, Groningen, and launches Paladino as an international artistWorks on the first of four projects with the New York printmakers Harlan & Weaver

1982 Participates in the Sydney Biennale and in Documenta 7, Kassel

Realises his first sculpture in bronze, Giardino chiuso

Makes the first of numerous visits to Brazil where his father is living

...
Wikipedia