Mimmo Paladino
1948 - Present
The research of Mimmo Paladino, initially focused on photography and, at the same time, on an assiduous practice of drawing, developed one of the most personal and authoritative language of the last decades, articulated around a complex fantastic iconography , whose roots are traceable in the Mediterranean culture. Among the protagonists of that return to painting that characterizes the late seventies, is the author of the famous Silent, I retire to paint a painting (1977), almost a programmatic declaration, for a work today considered exemplary of that passage, followed by long conceptual season. The years between 1978 and 1980 are marked by the production of monochrome paintings in bold colors, on which geometric structures are encamped. These works bear witness to a period of transition towards a renewed focus on figurative painting, the recovery of linguistic forms that re-emerge from tradition and the history of art, recovering the subjective dimension of the creative act: firm position in favor of the "reasons" of painting ", which brings him closer to those artists - Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Sandro Chia and Nicola De Maria - who would have been the authors of the Transavanguardia.