Mimmo Paladino

BIO
Mimmo Paladino was born in Paduli, in southern Italy, in 1948. He studied at the Liceo Artistico in Benevento in the late 1960s, when the art scene was dominated by the trends of minimalism and conceptualism.

Yet Paladino made his mark in the 1970s and 1980s by breaking away from those styles, and putting his energy toward expressive art that merged images from Christianity and classical Greek mythology with tribal and modern art. This new movement, which Paladino helped lead, was called the ‘Transavanguardia,’ or, ‘beyond the avant-garde.’

Paladino’s work can be found in museums and public collections around the world. Some of these include the City of Beijing Collection, Beijing, China; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts; the Kunstmuseum in Dusseldorf, Germany; the Berardo Collection in Sintra, Portugal; the Tate Gallery in London, England; and the Setagaya Museum in Tokyo, Japan.

ART
Mimmo Paladino is inspired by the art and artifacts of diverse cultures. He combines images drawn from mathematics, science and art, with ancient signs and symbols to create works of art that appear dreamlike and ambiguous. In Zenit, (or Zenith in English), Paladino has created a bronze sculpture of an elegant riderless horse. A geometric form that mathematicians call a stellated dodecahedron (a star-shaped form with twelve faces) appears to balance on one of its points on the horse’s back.

PROFILE

ABOUT THE ARTIST

ABOUT THE SCULPTURE