Mimmo Rotella

Why this artist matters now

Mimmo Rotella worked primarily in décollage, stripping and layering torn advertising posters to expose the material history embedded in commercial imagery. Operating in post-war Italy, he developed a practice built around the physical destruction and reassembly of found street posters, transforming mass-media surfaces into densely textured, fragmentary compositions. He was associated with the Ultra-Lettrists and later joined the Nouveau Réalisme movement, founded in 1960 by critic Pierre Restany, which positioned his method within a broader European engagement with consumer culture and the urban environment. His psychogeographic works extended this practice into conceptual territory shaped by the city as subject.

Source: Gladstone · Trust score: 100% · Updated 1mo ago