(Catanzaro 1918–2006 Milan)
Composizione, 1972, signed Rotella, artypo on canvas under plastic, 158 x 106 cm, framed, (MCC)

Provenance:
Galleria De Crescenzo, Rome
Farsettiarte, Prato, 29 Mai 2010
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibition:
Milan, Rotella, Rotonda della Besana, April - May 1975,

Literature:
T. Trini, Rotella, catalogue of the above mentioned exhibition, p. 59 ill.

A great discoverer of techniques and the typology of painting, Mimmo Rotella made artypo a style rather than just a linguistic innovation. During the second half of the sixties, his new work consisted of advertising images which were culled at the printing stage to be restored in their immediacy to the world of art. […] Artypo stems directly from typography. It comprises one of the many “gallery proofs” on which the printer controls the register and quality of the images and colors; the first scrap of paper-poster used when starting the machines and on which colors and images from another porters are overprinted; in the end it will be thrown away. […]
So writes Pierre Restany in the catalogue for his retrospective exhibition in Paris in 1971:
“ What is important to me is the fundamental contribution which Mimmo Rotella has made to mec-art, a logical conclusion of nouveau réalisme, that is the direct “appropriation” of the photo-mechanical image. In this way, he moved on from the posters to the macules, ready-made images obtained in printing by superimposing different proofs on the same sheet of paper. Mechanical art therefore becomes typographical art.
The artist adopts this or that printing technique right up to the point of applying a plastic coating to the macules, so as to give them complete objective autonomy”.
Tommaso Trini, Rotella, Prearo (ed.), Milan 1974