BOOK:Mimmo Rotella-Catalogue raisonné. Vol II (1962-1973), Skira

The second volume of the Nouveau Realiste protagonist’s catalogue raisonné, featuring extensive documentation of Mimmo Rotella’s décollages, in a slipcased hardcover volume. Domenico “Mimmo” Rotella helped pioneer the postwar Nouveau Realistes’ exploration of the torn poster, with his richly textured collages composed mainly of glossy magazine imagery, movie posters and advertisements. The second volume of the artist’s extended catalogue raisonné, this publication (edited by Germano Celant in Italian and English, consists of 716 pages with about 2050 color images and 300 in black & white), is edited by Germano Celant and focuses on work created between 1962 and 1973 as Rotella continued with his décollage practice while becomingly increasingly interested in the printing process. The resulting artypos* make use of overlapping photo emulsions on canvas to create compositions evocative of pop culture. With a keen focus on visual and cultural trends, Rotella’s work from this period of his career takes the iconography of the times and puts a unique interpretive spin on it. This catalogue raisonné provides scholarly analysis and verification alongside gorgeous full-color reproductions of Rotella’s pieces.-Dimitris Lempesis

* By the mid-1960s,  Mimmo Rotella had developed another technique, this time bringing together “art” and “typography”: the Artypo. In a process of appropriation of found objects, the artist would select posters from among the printing proofs typographers had discarded, which he then either mounted on canvas, waxed canvas, metal sheet or laminated.