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. Best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters. 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.

After finishing school studies he moves to Naples in 1933 to pursue his artistic studies, but he got a job at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. In 1941, he moved to Rome. He remains in the capital only for a short period, because he is called up. In 1944 he left the army and he graduated from the Art School of Naples. Between 1944 and 1945 he teaches drawing in Catanzaro. In 1945 he returned to Rome and, following his figurative beginnings and first experimentations, he began to paint new-geometric paintings. He starts in 1947 to participate at the exhibition, with the Exhibition Board of Fine Arts and the annual Art Club. 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. Also in 1952 he realized the second personal exhibithion at the Rockhill Nelson Gallery in 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.

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