Mimmo Germanà

related shows

Pictor Segretus

artists

Accardi Carla
Arman
Chia Sandro
Cingolani Marco
Crippa Roberto
De Angelis Marcello
Facco Andrea
Festa Tano
Finzi Ennio
Fontana Franco
Frangi Giovanni
Galliano Daniele
Gao Brothers
Germanà Mimmo
Innocente
Isgrò Emilio
Kim Joon
Laboratorio Saccardi
Liu Bolin
Ma Liuming
Montesano Gian Marco
Neri Marco
Nitsch Hermann
Paladino Mimmo
Pancrazzi Luca
Perilli Achille
Rotella Mimmo
Schifano Mario
Turcato Giulio
Vaccari Wainer

artworks

Untitled 26,8 x 22 in n. 2

Biography   

Mimmo Germanà (Catania 1944 – Milan 1992) came into the spotlight in the early Eighties with Transavanguardia, the term used by Achille Bonito Oliva to refer to a small group of Italian artists who started up a warm and visionary form of representation, with fauvist colours, taking ideas and quotations as they liked also from the art of the past, after the “cold” Seventies with its conceptual art.

With Cucchi, Chia, Clemente, Paladino and De Maria, the self-taught Sicilian artist took part in this return to painting with his own personal injection of popular, apparently ingenuous imagination, with powerful symbolic overtones.
“A dazzling, colourful, rapid inventiveness of yellows, reds and blues” wrote Francesco Gallo, a fellow Sicilian, commemorating his friend who died of AIDS aged just 48.

A sort of Mediterranean expressionism combined the primitivism of forms with the Dionysian impetus of intense colours and powerful materials to compose scenes with a mythical feel about them. This fantastic energy (he has been referred to as “the Italian Chagall”) earned him – as early as 1980 – participation in the Venice Biennale.

In 1987 the Premio Gallarate was awarded to this artist, with his complex, unconventional and indomitable personality. Fundamental themes were his figures of women with characteristic oval faces and enchanting Mediterranean landscapes, which became the hallmark of his iconographic vocabulary.

Solo exhibitions: Galleria L’Attico (Rome, ’70), Galleria Toselli (Milan, ‘77, ’78, ’81, ’85), Galleria Pio Monti (Rome, ’78), Galleria Persano (Turin, ’78), Galleria Mazzoli (Modena, ’80, ’81), Galleria Cavalieri (Bologna, ’81, ’82), Galleria Advance (Dusseldorf, ’81), Gall.Ariadne (Vienna, ’82), Galleria Giuli (Lecco, ’82), Galleria Antiope France (Paris, ’83), Galleria Ferrari (Verona, ’83, ’87), Galleria Barlach (Hamburg, ’84), Biennale (Sydney, ’84), Galleria La Bertesca (Milan, ’85), Galleria Chifel (Genoa, ’85, ’86), Galleria Studio Kostel (Paris, ’87), Galleria Campanile (Bari, ’87), Galleria Soligo (Rome, ’88), Galleria Roberto Monti (Modena, ’88), Galleria Civica (Valdagno, ’88), Studio Galliani (Genoa, ’88), Galleria A. Maeght (Paris, ’89), Galleria Free Art (Turin, ’89), Galleria Yesse (Bielefeld, ’89), Galleria Manuela Boscolo (Busto Arsizio, ’89), Centre Culturel Français (Cairo and Alexandria, ’89), Museum of Painting and Sculpture (Istanbul, Turkey, ’89), La Bottega dei Vasai (Milan, ’90), Galleria Mazzoli (Modena, ’90), Artscope (Brussels, ’90), Ephemere (Montigny le Tilleul, ’90), De Gryse (Tielt, ’90), Centre Cult. Français (Damascus, Syria, ’90), Cultural Action Delegation (Thessaloniki, Greece ‘90), French Institute (Athens, Greece, ‘90), Centre Culturel Français (Amman, Jordan, ’90), Runsterlrhaus (Graz, ’91).
Retrospective Exhibitions: Museo d’arte contemporanea e Fondazioni Orestiadi (Gibellina, 1994) curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Galleria Boxart (Verona) curated by Francesco Gallo.

According to S. Grasso, he is the “James Dean of art because he has always opted for a powerful form of painting...”, while in Del Vecchio’s view he was “a centaur of the brushstroke, of an adventurous style...” and A. Bonito Oliva wrote: “a flowing rhythm underlies his painting, which is made of dense brushstrokes and thicknesses, louring colours and powerful materials.”.