Mimmo Rotella was born in Catanzaro on the 7th of October 1918, the son of a milliner. Following high school he moved to Naples where he began art studies (in 1941 he went to Rome after having obtained a post at the Ministry of Postal and Telecommunication Services). He did not stay long in the capital, however: on being called up he joined the course in the Officer-training School in Nocera. From here he was sent to the School for Non-commissioned Officers in Caserta (Campania). In 1944 he left the armed forces and then obtained his diploma at the Naples Art Academy. From 1944 until 1945 he taught draftsmanship at his city's Institute for Surveyors. In 1945 he moved to Rome: following his figurative beginnings and first experimentations he elaborated a manner of pictorial expression of neo-geometrical matrix. His participation in exhibitions began in 1947 at the Mostra Sindacale di Arti Figurative. He also took part in all the annual exhibitions of the Art Club up until 1951, both in Rome and Turin. As an alternative expressive method 1949 saw him invent phonetic poetry which the artist called 'epistaltic' (a neologism lacking sense): this was a collection of words (also invented ones), whistles, sounds, numbers and onomatopoeic reiterate. In the same year he wrote its Manifesto which in 1955 was published by Leonardo Sinisgalli in "Civiltà delle Macchine". His first one-man exhibition, with abstract-geometrical works, was held in 1951 at the Galleria Chiurazzi in Rome (an exhibition which enjoyed little favour on the part of criticism). Also in 1951 he had his first contact with French artists, exhibiting in Paris at the "Salon des Realistes Nouvelles". For the period bridging 1951-1952 he obtained a scholarship on the part of the Fullbright Foundation, thanks to which he was able to sojourn in the United States at the University of Kansas City with the appointment as Artist in Residence. Here he created a large mural composition and recorded phonetic poems with the accompaniment of percussion instruments. At Harvard University in Boston he held a performance of phonetic poetry and recorded other pieces for the Library of Congress in Washington. In 1960 he 'joined' the Nouveau Réalisme group (although he did not sign its manifesto). The theoretician of this movement was Pierre Restany and included - amongst others - names like Klein, Tinguely, César, Spoerri, Arman and Christo. The group also included the French artists Hains, Villeglé and Dufrêne who in fact also worked on the collage, albeit in an autonomous way. By working in the most total isolation Rotella had anticipated the path of his French colleagues who were only exhibited for the first time in 1957 at the Galerie Colette Allendy in Paris. While the press increasingly more talked about the phenomenon of Affichisme Rotella moved to Paris where he began to elaborate a procedure of serial production by way of the projection of images in the negative on emulsified canvas. This operation was to be given the definition of Reportage by the artist or, and more specifically, Mec-Art in 1965 together with the art critic Otto Hanh and the painter Alain Jaquet. The same year saw his Parisian exhibition at the Galerie J. Using typographical products, between 1967 and 1973 he created his Art-typo works, printing proofs freely chosen and reproduced on canvas. With this procedure he amused himself in insetting and superimposing advertising images: «I inverted my old approach: first I tried to disintegrate, now I try to reintegrate that matter, that reality». He then created his sovrapitture (overpaintings), inspired by the up-to-date theme of graffiti, pictorially intervening on the advertising posters that were torn and then glued on canvas (and from 1987 also ripped posters glued on a support of sheet metal). He drew anonymous writings, like the ones it is possible to read on city walls: signs, love notes and political slogans/epithets in a double message. In 1990 he took part in the "Art et Pub" exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and in the "High and Low" exhibition held in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1994 he was invited to take part in "Italian Metamorphosis" held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 1996 he took part in "Face ... l'Histoire" at the Centre Pompidou and in the exhibition entitled "Halls of Mirrors" held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (an exhibition that was to tour the world, Rome included). 1996 also saw the Internet inauguration of a one-man exhibition which was diffused online - the first event of its kind in Italy.

• published: 08 Sep 2013
• views: 13