Mimmo Paladino  (Italian, 1948) 

Mimmo Paladino (Italian, b.1948) is a sculptor, painter, and printmaker associated with the 1980s Italian Transavantgarde movement. Born Domenico Paladino in Paduli, Campania, Paladino attended the Benevento Art High School when Minimalism and Conceptualism were internationally en vogue. He was primarily influenced, however, by the aesthetic of Pop artists Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine, whose works he encountered at the 1964 Venice Bienniale when he was 16. His first serious efforts, produced in the 1970s, drew on figurative aspects of Pop Art in brightly colored paintings, displaying an interest in myth and magic. In the 1980s, Paladino became involved with the Transavantgarde, the Italian version of the European Neo-Expressionism movement, which celebrated joyful, emotional paintings. The artist also began to exhibit internationally, participating in the Venice Biennale in 1980 and in the documenta VII in Kassel, in 1982. Paladino lives and works in his hometown of Paduli.