Twenty years after his death, a major retrospective dedicated to the master of décollage traces sixty years of artistic exploration, showcasing the innovative power of a visual language that left its mark on 20th-century art. 
With over 100 works from museums, foundations and public and private collections, the exhibition offers a comprehensive and detailed overview of Rotella’s ceaseless artistic exploration, from 1945 to 2005. 

The exhibition, alongside some of his most famous works from the 1960s, highlights the extraordinary variety of techniques and artistic languages developed by Rotella throughout his career. The exhibition, divided into seven thematic sections, guides visitors through the main phases of his work: it opens with three early works on paper dated 1945, on loan from the Mimmo Rotella Foundation, and concludes with Dance Dream from 2005, which encapsulates some of the key themes of his exploration of cinema, thus offering a comprehensive overview of sixty years of artistic experimentation. The artist passed away in 2006, and this year marks the twentieth anniversary of his death. The importance of the exhibition and the rigour of the selection of works is also demonstrated by the presence at the Palazzo Ducale of no fewer than three key works by Rotella exhibited at the famous 1964 Biennale, the one that saw the triumph of American Pop Art. These are: Tenere è la notte and Violenza segreta from 1963, as well as Birra! from 1962.
‘Décollage’, in its various forms, remains the central theme of the exhibition. A radical symbolic gesture at the heart of Rotella’s artistic vision, the act of tearing stands out as an absolute and disruptive act: a gesture that is both aesthetic and political, capable of opening up new avenues of perception and laying bare the truth hidden behind images of consumerism.

As curator Alberto Fiz puts it, “what matters is no longer what lies on the surface, but the fragmentary and fragmented nature of a real dimension destined to change under the observer’s knowing gaze. The crackling image breaks free from its solipsistic dimension to become part of a constantly evolving process”.

This desire to go beyond the surface, exploring the material in its deepest aspects, led the artist in the 1980s towards overpainting, in dialogue with the return to painting that characterised many European movements, including the Transavantgarde, without abandoning his engagement with graffiti art, just as he had engaged with Pop Art in the 1960s.
 

Mimmo Rotella 1945 – 2005
curated by Alberto Fiz

23 April – 13 September 2026
Palazzo Ducale, Sottoporticato
Genova

Tuesday to Sunday 11-19
closed on Monday