Mimmo Rotella,
Italian 1918-2006 -
Décollage, 1958; 
décollage and vinavil on canvas, signed lower...

Mimmo Rotella,
Italian 1918-2006 -

Décollage, 1958; 

décollage and vinavil on canvas, signed lower centre 'Rotella', 151 x 114 cm (ARR)

Provenance:
Galleria De Crescenzo & Viesti, Rome;
private collection, Italy, purchased from the above in the late 1990s (according to a previous cataloguing of the work);
Sotheby's, London, 20th Century Italian Art, 15th October 2010, lot 21;
private collection, acquired from the above;
Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art Day Auction, 8th March 2018, lot 130;
private collection, acquired from the above

Literature:
G Celent, 'Mimmo Rotella: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol I: from 1944 to 1961, book II, Milan, Skira, 2016, p.624, Ill.1958 074

Note:
this work is registered in the Fondazione Mimmo Rotella, Milan, no.1133 DC 958/000

Rotella was a seminal force in the development of European post-war art.

It was in the 1950s that Rotella started to develop his recognisable style, after having travelled to the USA on a Fullbright Scholarship in 1951-2, where he encountered some of the leading artists of the twentieth century, including Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Yves Klein, and Robert Rauschenberg. The radical nature of these artists approaches undoubtedly influenced Rotellas own work, including the development of the décollages for which he is best known. These décollages, constructed from ripped film posters, by their very nature blur the boundaries between high and low art. By the name itself, they are a protest against pop culture. This approach led Rotella to align himself with the Nouveau Réalisme movement founded by contemporaries Pierre Restany and Yves Klein in 1960.

Rotellas work has been the subject of exhibitions in his lifetime: his first solo exhibition was held at the Gallerie Chiurazzi in Rome in 1951, and he was chosen to represent Italy at the Venice Biennale in 1961. His artwork has been included in exhibitions at the Guggenheim in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Décollages, such as this, are in the collections of galleries such as the Tate Modern in London, MoMA in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection in Venice.