MIMMO ROTELLA – BEYOND DÉCOLLAGE
2020-09-28Perhaps best known for his Décollages made of distressed street posters ripped from the walls of Rome, “Beyond Décollage” establishes Mimmo Rotella (1918 – 2006) as a major pioneer of the Pop Art movement, who worked simultaneously with Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg.
Rotella created an art form that would chronicle his time and marry the power of iconic film and popular imagery to the history of painting, forming a portrait of Italy during its economic boom as it rebranded itself with modernity in the post-war decades. He did so by inventing new techniques to transform the traditional canvas into a photographic surface, a space for layering, printing and exploring what an image could be. The artist experimented with developing photographs on canvas in his Photo Emulsions and with layering and overprinting found images with newsprint and all manner of popular media in his Artypos.
Opposite – Arabesque, 1965
Exhibition runs through to December 12th, 2020
Cardi Gallery
22 Grafton Street
W1S4EX
London