MIMMO PALADINO

Galleri Star offered its public a rare opportunity to see a selection of prints by Mimmo Paladino.

Mimmo Paladino (b. 1948) is an Italian sculptor, painter and print artist who was a leading figure in the Italian Transavantgarde movement. He was born Domenico Paladino in Padula, Campania, in southern Italy. He received his art education in the 1960s at a time when the art scene was completely dominated by minimalism and conceptualism. Paladino never lost faith with the painting, however, and came to play an important part in its revival towards the end of the 1970s with the development of Neo-expressionism. (Ryszard Warsinski was also part of this revival.) Paladino was also strongly influenced by the aesthetics of pop art as expressed through the works of artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine. These seemingly disparate elements came together in Paladino’s work to create a tension that never fails to challenge and surprise. It is precisely this amalgam of contradictory styles that typify his paintings of the 1970s.

In the 1980s Paladino turned to sculpture, with drawing and printmaking as important parallel activities. Indeed, neo-expressionist trends are as evident in his three-dimensional creations as in his two-dimensional works. Playful and naivistic, serious and grotesque – in the art of Paladino we come face to face with art that in all its simplicity captures something of the human condition in all its complexity.

It was VKLs Director Morten Viskum who compiled the presentation of Mimmo Paladino for Galleri Star this summer, and through his personal vision – that of an artist – we were delighted to present this great Italian to our visitors.

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Installation photography: Nina Ansten

Participating artists

• Mimmo Paladino