Aenigma

Mimmo Paladino is one of the original members of the transavantgarde, a group of Italian expressionist painters active in the 1970s and 1980s s. Breaking with the constraints of minimalism and the sparse materialism of arte povera – two art movements then dominant in Italy – Paladino and his peers revitalised figurative painting and sculpture, taking a free approach to imagery from a whole range of historical sources.

Paladino’s ‘primitive’ style is immediately distinctive, and his imagery, often allegorical, is drawn from memory and myth. He was born in 1948 in Paduli (Benevento) in southern Italy, a landscape scattered with Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Christian archaeological remains. His figures are haunting, often skeletal bodies with masked faces. He has said he creates art for himself and does not like to give any explanations, preferring to leave it to viewers to make their own interpretations.