Mimmo Rotella: Beyond Décollage. Photo Emulsions and Artypos. 1963-1980

Cardi Gallery, London, hosts Mimmo Rotella‘s (1918 – 2006) solo exhibition “Mimmo Rotella: Beyond Décollage. Photo Emulsions and Artypos. 1963-1980”, running March 2 – July 31, 2020.
A major pioneer of the Pop Art movement, Mimmo Rotella worked with Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, and distinguished himself as a the first visionary artist to use a photographic process to print a kaleidoscope of iconic images onto traditional materials associated with conventional art, such as canvas and paper.
Rotella created an art form that would chronicle his time and marry the power of iconic film and popular imagery to the history of painting. He invented new techniques to transform the traditional canvas into a photographic surface, a space for layering, printing and exploring what an image could be. The artist experimented with developing photographs on canvas in his “Photo Emulsion”s and with layering and overprinting found images with newsprint and all manner of popular media in his “Artypos”. These mixed media works convey Italy’s emerging post-war consumer culture as a multifaceted montage. Rotella’s works create a portrait of Italy during its economic boom as it rebranded itself with modernity in the post-war decades.