An exhibition titled "Mimmo
Rotella and Art History" has opened in Catanzaro, the artist's
birthplace, at the Casa della Memoria house/museum dedicated to
Rotella.
The show runs through August 30, 2020, and is a sort of game
of mirrors that the artist plays with himself and some big names
in art of the past and present, including Michelangelo,
Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Modigliani, Carrá, Picasso, and
De Chirico.
The exhibition, created by the Mimmo Rotella Foundation and
curated by the Mimmo Rotella Institute, offers a selection of 19
works that highlight the link between the artist and some of the
leading interpreters of art history.
Antonella Soldaini, the show's curator and the director of
the Rotella Institute, said the importance of the exhibition is
"the didactic aspect, the idea of looking at how Rotella related
with art history and with the characters over time".
"It should really be a show for all the schools, because
Rotella was very interested not only in himself, but also in the
past, starting from classical art up to his contemporaries,"
Soldaini said.
"It therefore represents an excursus through his works, from
décollages to photo essays, from artypos to ready-mades, to
overpainting. It shows, through his work, what others did
before, and reinterprets it through his language," she said.
"The choice to display works different from the permanent
collection for such a long time comes from the need to make this
space increasingly viable, alternating the collection, which
everyone is familiar with, with other works by the master,"
Soldaini said.
"The last room is very interesting because Rotella is
compared with his contemporaries, so we find a décollage made by
taking off the poster for a show by Sandro Chia, his
contemporary, and the reference to the Marilyn by Andy Warhol,"
she said.
Examples of comparison with the past include the genius of
Caravaggio in the overpainting "Madonna of Miracles or of
Pilgrims" and "When Caravaggio Arrived".
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is revisited through Marcel
Duchamp in two works, an assemblage and a collage "Untitled".
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