Mimmo Rotella

(Catanzaro, 1918 - Milano, 2006)

The technique of effaçage (erasure) involves applying special solvents to magazine or newspaper clippings to completely fade or decolorize the image. Rotella, a celebrated pioneer of so-called Italian pop art and the leading Italian artist within the French nouveaux réalistes group, employed it during the 1970s, consistently pursuing his artistic research based on the "aggression" of advertising and media images, which he had already explored since his first famous décollages of the 1950s. In our work, the artist has chosen a page from a French magazine with a frivolous and erotic subject matter; the result is a blue monochrome from which two faded female bodies emerge, their faces, however, erased.
Authenticated and signed by the artist on the back.
Signed and dated lower right