Work of art by Mimmo Rotella.

Erasing with solvents of advertising page. Dimensions: 28.3 x 20.5 cm. Year 1972. 

Born in 1918, the Italian artist Rotella was considered to be one of the leading figures during the second half of the 20th century, involved in the Nouveau Réalisme and international Pop Art movements.

As a young man he mingled with the trendsetters of the time—members of the Gruppo Forma 1 (Carla Accardi, Piero Dorazio, Achille Perilli, etc.)—and after his figurative beginnings and initial experimenting, Rotella began painting abstract-geometrical paintings inspired by the works of Vasilij Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. Upon moving to the United States, he began personal paintings, discovering advertising posters as an artistic expression and giving life to the décollage in the '50s. Indeed, he would rip pieces of posters off city walls and glue them on canvas, reworking them later in his studio. His works are on display in numerous personal and collective shows in Italy and abroad, including London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts since 1957. 

His first décollages featured film and music stars like Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley. In 1990, he participated in the "Art et Pub" show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and in the exposition "High and Low" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was invited to the Guggenheim Museum of New York in 1994 for the show "The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968", then again to the Centre Pompidou in 1996 for the "Face à l'Histoire" exhibit.