In 1977 the artist made his debut in Naples with a large pastel mural in the gallery of Lucio Amelio. The work constitutes the first sign of the new pictorial figuration that in those years imposed itself as a new trend in contemporary art in the world, the Transavanguardia, which made its debut at the Venice Biennale in 1980. In Mimmo Paladino's artistic research, images referring to an arcane and primitive universe, where forms are translated into elegant and simplified signs. Allegorical figures inhabit a world where living and dead coexist, skulls and skeletons, the characteristic masks without expression, animals. The same forms are progressively freeing themselves from the initial support to then live independently in a three-dimensional context. Since 1985, the dialogue between painting and sculpture has become tighter and large-scale installations are increasingly based on combinations of figurative sculptural elements with monochromatic pictorial scans. In the room dedicated to him to the Mother, the ensemble formed by the hermetic signs scratched on the rough surface of the walls and the sculpture projecting into space take on an environmental relief that immerses the viewer in an epiphanic totality.
