Exhibitions, at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, a tribute to Mimmo Rotella, master of décollage

The exhibition, together with some of the most famous works of the 1960s, highlights the extraordinary variety of techniques and languages ​​developed by Rotella over the course of his career. The itinerary, divided into seven thematic sections, accompanies the visitor through the main phases of its production. It opens with three early works on paper dated 1945, coming from the Mimmo Rotella Foundation, and ends with Dance Dream from 2005 which summarizes some essential themes of his research on cinema, thus offering an exhaustive vision of sixty years of artistic experimentation. The artist passed away in 2006 and this year marks the twentieth anniversary of his death. The importance of the exhibition and the rigor in the selection of works is also demonstrated by the presence at Palazzo Ducale of three fundamental works by Rotella exhibited in the famous 1964 Biennale, the one that saw the triumph of American Pop Art. These are ‘The Night Is Hold’ and ‘Secret Violence’ from 1963, alongside Birra! from 1962.

Décollage, in its various forms, remains the underlying theme of the exhibition. A radical gesture-symbol of Rotella’s poetics, the tear imposes itself as an absolute and disruptive act. A gesture that is both aesthetic and political, capable of opening new doors to perception and revealing the truth hidden behind the images of consumption. As the curator Alberto Fiz states, “what is on the surface no longer counts, but the fragmentary and fragmented aspect of a real dimension destined to change under the complicit gaze of the observer. The crackling image emerges from its solipsistic dimension to become part of a continuously evolving process”. This desire to go beyond the surface, investigating the matter in its deepest aspects, led the artist in the 1980s towards overpaintings, in dialogue with the return to painting that characterizes many European experiences, including the Transavantgarde, without renouncing the comparison with graffiti, just as in the 1960s he was able to measure himself with Pop Art.

The exhibition also dedicates a space to the emulsified black and white canvases created during the years of lead, in which Rotella abandons the universe of celebrities to deal with one of the most dramatic moments in Italian history. The result is a sort of personal visual reportage built not on direct reality, but on the images returned by the media, filtered and reworked through his artistic language. The investigation from the 1980s onwards is documented by works of great significance, as evidenced by ‘Large green blank’ from 1980, a three-metre work from the Mimmo Rotella Foundation, in which the artist makes a clean sweep by covering the image in its entirety, leaving only the edges free. Or ‘Attenti’ from 2004, a décollage on sheet metal, also three meters long, in which the image of a roaring tiger appears.

Finally, there is a reference to Genoa, the city in which Rotella created ‘The rite of laceration’ for the last time, a performance tearing posters off the walls, carried out in October 2004 on the occasion of the exhibition Arts and architecture 1900-2000 curated by Germano Celant for Palazzo Ducale. A rare fragment of the happening is presented in the exhibition together with photographs and a filmed document of the event.