Mimmo Paladino New Paintings and Sculptures

Mimmo Paladino was born in 1948 in Paduli near Benevento in Southern Italy. Today he lives between Paduli and Milan. Paladino studied art at the Liceo artistico di Benevento from 1964 to 1968 and he had his first solo show in 1977. It was in the late 1970s that Paladino first came to public attention. The first major retrospective exhibition was mounted in 1985 at the Lenbach Haus in Munich.

Paladino is one of the most important figurative artists in Italy today. Originally a draughtsman, the artist soon included several other artistic media into his work. Although today he is most famous as a painter and sculptor, Paladino is also a prolific printmaker. Paladino began sculpting in 1982, when he produced monumental bronzes using richly coloured patinas.

Among other sources, the work of Paladino draws upon by his passionate involvement with history and his interpretation of myth. “No artist of today has quite succeeded in communicating with the ancient world with such sophistication if only because of his instinctive understanding of two fundamental concepts essential to the ancient arts, namely gesture and memory.“ (Norman Rosenthal) 

“Paladino does not pretend to be recreating the past itself; he merely renders our desire for it, our conviction that we have been shut off from something large and mysterious.” 

Mimmo Paladino has had several solo shows at the Gallery Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg and Paris. He has exhibited in many museums and galleries world-wide and is represented among other important public collections in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Guggenheim of New York, the Lenbachhaus in Munich and the Tate Gallery in London.