La Mortadella

Mimmo Rotella - La Mortadella

This is a Mimmo Rotella's seridécollage torn by hand that represents the film poster of Lady Liberty (La Mortadella) starring Sophia Loren, in which the actress interprets the role of Maddalena Ciarrapico, Neapolitan worker that disembarks in America. 

Seridecollage signed and numbered in original by the artist. Limited edition in 120 works with arabic numerals, 50 works in roman numerals and 20 artistic test. STAMP of Mimmo Rotella Foundation in the lower left. The work is published on catalogue by Elena Pontiggia, p. 88

MIMMO ROTELLA: BIOGRAPHY 

Mimmo Rotella is an Italian artist with Calabrian origins who was a leading figure in the European art scene of the second half of the 20th century. In 1941 he enlisted fighting on the Italian front. Once back in his homeland, he managed to graduate in 1944 from the Naples art high school and immediately began teaching art in Catanzaro.

In 1945 in Rome, he came into contact with the Avant-Garde Movement and artists such as Carla Accardi, Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo, and Giulio Turcato.

By 1947, after learning about and studying French and American art of the 1940s, he flew to the United States on a prestigious Fullbright Fondation scholarship, attending the University of Kansas. The American experience allowed Rotella to discover and learn about all the major artists and trends of those years, such as Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg.

After a short break in his artistic career, he began the Decollage series in 1954. This series of works would become Rotella's primary creative expression. 

Rotella made decollages by manipulating different advertising or movie posters taken from cities, then tearing them up (with his hands, brush handle, or scraper) and bringing them back on different types of media. 

He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1964 and at the Rome Quadriennale in 1965. Mimmo Rotella's works of art have been exhibited at the Museo del Novecento in Milan, MoMa in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Guggenheim in Venice, passing through numerous other museums and the world's most prestigious collections.

With the aim of preserving his works and documents of his artistic career, the Mimmo Rotella Foundation was established in 2000 at his behest. In 2004 he received an honorary degree in architecture from the Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria.Mimmo Rotella died in 2006. His works can be found in many museums and major Italian and foreign collections

THE DECOLLAGES OF MIMMO ROTELLA

Mimmo Rotella decollage technique consists of pasting on canvas advertising or movie posters found on city walls that the artist tore down. 

It was The Noveau Realisme movement of 1960, of which Rotella was a member, that provided the definition "decollage": playing with the meaning in a privative key, it is a technique opposed to normal collage. 

A practice in use among Pop Art artists at the time, Rotella experimented with this technique on new media until 1958, using mainly advertising posters. This technique allowed him to achieve new abstract compositions, completely untethered from the original poster. 

Through the tears, the artist revealed famous people (such as Marylin Monroe and Elvis Presley) present in the underlying layers. Indeed, central to his artistic production is the figure of Marilyn Monroe, to whom Rotella dedicates a whole series of décollages. 

The choice of this subject is not accidental. Given Rotella's pronounced ability to interpret his era, mass society, consumerism, and unbridled communication in an artistic key, he chooses the iconic icon of the 1950s United States. Having been able to observe American society during his study abroad period, the artist chooses the symbol of America as the protagonist of his works. 

The artist's intent is to elevate simple street objects into true works of art, thus transforming the city into a creative place and a poster torn into works exhibited around the world. 

And just like Marylin who went from the street to the stage, Rotella wants to pay homage to the actress and model by converting the posters of her films posted on the streets of Rome into works of art.

The figures are immediately recognizable to the public at first glance, but they possess altered and torn forms, with likenesses that even the artist had not foreseen before the tearing.

"Tearing posters off the walls is the only revenge, the only protest against a society that has lost its taste for change and mind-blowing transformations."

The posters chosen for Mimmo Rotella's artworks are largely movie posters of classic films, where the viewer is always able to make out the names and faces of Hollywood stars despite the tears. In this way, the artist wanted to show the power and impact of advertising on the collective imagination.

Mimmo Rotella: Quotations, Prices and Artworks for sale from Deodato Arte 

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