Mimmo Paladino was born in Paduli (Benevento) in 1948 and works today between his homeland and Rome. He is one of the most established representatives of Transavant-garde, a movement theorized in 1980 by critic Achille Bonito Oliva who explodes in the "Open" section of the Biennale of that year: artists claim a return to painting at the expense of dematerialization desired by Minimalism and Conceptualism. Paladino’s experience evolved in the 1980s, combining the abstract language with a renewed focus on figurative. In 1964, visiting the Venice Biennale, he received a strong impression from American Pop artists. Through dense references to the myth and developing archetypal images he postulates an art with an archaic, Mediterranean and dreamlike taste, which has as its pivot the theme of memory and fragment. Its statues are icons, ancient masks, geometrical, almost an alphabet of signs that return in a cyclical way. Memorable remains his installation Montagna di sale a piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, of the 90s, with human figures of warriors and the great horses inverted inside the white heap. Paladino dedicates himself, as well as to painting and sculpture, also to engraving: aquaforte, acquatinta, linoleography, xylography. He then intervenes on the territory, with installations for churches, squares and palaces. Another privileged place is the theatre for which he has an intense activity of scenography (often in pairs with Mario Martone) that gives him the Ubu prize for Oedipus in Colono. He also tries in the cinema. Up
In the panoramic spaces of Villa Rufolo in Ravello, a sculpture exhibition curated by Flavio Arensi was held in 2013. For the Sala dei Cavalli of Palazzo Te in Mantua, Paladino made with aluminium and tuff matrices a monumental horse with inside a man, archetype of Ulysses and the grip of Troy.
