Mimmo Rotella

Consided crazy by some but a genius to others, Italian artist Mimmo Rotella used collaging any way possible. As stated in "MIMMO ROTELLA; Extravagant experimental artist" by James Kirkup, "Rotella made his name in the 1950s by ripping poster s of film star s from the walls of Rome by night and then trans-formingthem into ingenious, provocative and amusing collages. They were mainly posters of Italian stars, for it was the period of the great Italian film-maker"(Kirkup). He expressed his style of collaging by using the minimum as possible which was finding posters hanging in Rome. There is something about this that gives these posters such an organic and sentimental feeling to them. Just knowing that these creations were simply made from many posters around town give his work a very home feeling towards them. Mixing up the faces of different actors and actresses gave him a slight abstraction in his work. Though his attempted at becoming a contempterary artist failed, this use of collaging became a huge success.

I think having this sense of randomness gave each piece its own characteristics. No piece would be the same because of the various amounts of posters he found and used to create each piece. I think having this sense of random really is the highlight of his work and that you can appreciate his style compared to other abstract and very detailed artists such as Schwitters, or Rauschenberg.