Mimmo Paladino. Homage to Franz J. Lenhart, 2017
The Human Shapes open-air gallery ends for now with an artwork by Mimmo Paladino (Paduli, 1948), one of the foremost representatives of the Transavantgarde. That movement’s theoretical groundwork was laid in 1979 and presented in public in 1980 at the Venice Biennale by art critic Achille Bonito Oliva. Following the Neoavanguardia movement, it advocated a return to handcrafting in art, to figurative painting (mainly of the expressionist kind) and to traditional techniques. The movement immediately gained international recognition, becoming a widespread expressive style of art in countries like Germany and the USA. After an early conceptual phase, Paladino developed a figurative style merging visual and formal references to different cultural areas (e.g. to Egyptian and paleo-Christian art), and used techniques of painting, sculpture, mosaic construction, and etching.
Mimmo Paladino’s tribute to the artist, painter and graphic Franz J. Lenhart (Bad Häring, 1898 – Meran/Merano, 1992)–one of the foremost representatives of early twentieth-century Italian poster design and a resident of Meran since 1922–is a lying head reminiscent of archaic examples dating back as far as the Etruscan plastic. However, it also evokes the so-called Primitivism of some avant-garde artists of the twentieth century, including Amedeo Modigliani.