Mimmo Paladino

Biography

Mimmo Paladino was born in Paduli (Benevento) in 1948. Driven by his family towards artistic studies, he attended the Art School of Benevento, graduating in 1968. After graduating he came into contact with the artistic circles of Campania where he met Achille Bonito Oliva who placed him in the movement of the Transavantgarde and which will follow him throughout his artistic career. After his initial interest in photography, also following his move to Milan at the beginning of the 1980s, he approached painting and sculpture, also becoming passionate about engraving and drawing. On the canvas he inserts geometric signs, masks, figures that refer to primitive cultures. The exhibition activity is intense, both with the Transavantgarde group and alone, which will develop in Italy, Europe and the Americas, in public institutions and private galleries. He also engages in large-scale outdoor installations such as "The mountain of salt" exhibited in front of the Palazzo Reale in Milan and the "Hortus conclusus" in the Cloister of San Domenico in Benevento, while the sculpture "Door" created is monumental in Lampedusa symbolizing the welcome to migrants. 

Mimmo Paladino - Transavanguardia

Transavanguardia is an artistic movement, exclusively Italian, founded in the late 1970s by the critic Achille Bonito Oliva. The Trans-Avant-garde aims to overcome the Conceptual Art, which was all the rage until then, for a return to painting in its traditional canons, canvas, brush and colors. The purpose of the Trans-Avant-garde is to rediscover painting, and in particular figurative painting, taking it from the oblivion to which the artistic avant-garde had condemned it. The artists who belong to this movement are only five: Sandro Chia, Mimmo Paladino, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, Francesco Clemente