MI VOENA - Mimmo Rotella Institute

ROBILANT + VOENA are pleased to present The Maverick Mimmo Rotella as part of Mimmo Rotella 2016, a series of event organized to commemorate the ten year anniversary since the passing of the artist.

As suggested by the title, the exhibition brings attention to some lesser known and unusual methods employed by Rotella and therefore will focus only on a few techniques which were explored by the artist during his career, begun during the early 1950s and ended in the early 2000s. Rotella, who is best known for his décollages, was in fact, by nature, a great experimenter. His interest in the expressive possibilities of the use of different working methods was directed at a lifelong need to overcome the limitations imposed by the traditional languages that were already codified.

After the success obtained with the décollages and retro d’affiches, which are deliberately not exhibited in this show, was interested in a wide range of artistic methods.

Through his experimentation with both materials and techniques, by the 1960s the artist had begun using further innovative artistic practices such as photographic reproduction.

The exhibition will bring together some of the most important examples which exemplify this technique, such as a Violenza segreta (1963), Ice cream (1963), Pax mundi (1963) and Divertiamoci (1966). During the same period the artist produced his artypos, which were made using printing proofs normally destined fro the shredder selected in typographies. Examples made with this technique are Grande source (1966-1971), 3 bottoni (1971) and Bottiglia con bicchieri (1971).

Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, the artist further developed the photographic reproduction technique and produced some pieces using the most incisive images of the Italian “years of lead”. From this series are works such as Italy in torment (1979), Italy's Trial (1979), Reperti (1979), I guerriglieri (1980), Storia del terrorismo (1980) and Lufthansa (1979). During the late 1980s and early 90s, the artist returned to painting in the style of sovrapitture, obtained by placing a pictorial sign of great visual impact on posters and décollages. Some of these works presented on this occasion are realized on metal sheet are L’aereoplano (1987), Shakespeare (1987), Sul Muro (1990), CeSSna (1988) and The Kiss (1990), the latter of impressive measures. In 1990 he  turned his hand to sculpture and created a ceramic series called Replicanti, also present in the exhibition.

“Mimmo Rotella 2016” is an initiative linked to the tenth anniversary of the passing of Mimmo Rotella. It involves a number of galleries and institutions in Milan, witnessing the relationship between the artist and the city where he worked and lived in his last years. The initiative is realized in collaboration with Mimmo Rotella Institute, set up in 2012 by Inna and Aghnessa Rotella with the aim of compiling the catalogue raisonné, improving understanding of the figure and the art of Mimmo Rotella and promoting his work at the national and international level. The Mimmo Rotella Institute is directed by Antonella Soldaini with the scientific support of Veronica Locatelli.