Vespero

The beginning of the 1980s marked a very important phase in Mimmo Paladino's artistic development. The artist's early works, executed during the 1970s are still abstract and bound to the Minimalist and Conceptualist climate. It is only at the beginning of the following decade that images begin to assert themselves again in his work and it is in this period that Paladino and the Italian artists Cucchi, Chia, Clemente, and De Maria began to produce figurative works with a "nomadic" attitude, that allowed them to pick up and use freely whatever elements they need from any tradition and any style, including above all primitive and avant-garde art. These five artists were gathered together by Achille Bonito Oliva in 1980 in his group show Aperto '80 in Venice and Bonito Olivia invented the term Transavanguardia in order to collectively identify their unique approach towards painting. In the same year, Paladino had two important exhibitions in New York, at Annina Nosei and Marian Goodman's galleries respectively. Vespero was painted in 1981.

Paladino's iconography is often enigmatic and haunted by symbols of death and religion. In this work, too, the artist has deliberately left his allegories and symbols open to various interpretations, refusing any univocal reading. Art is, according to Paladino, a cathartic and mysterious activity, which can not be fully explained. As it is often the case in Paladino's paintings, even the title is not intended to clarify the subject. It adds, on the contrary, further enigma to the scene. Vespero, the vesper, is the time when the sun goes down and also the time of prayer, especially in places like the Catholic south of Italy, Paladino native's region. Vesper is also the time when anxieties and fears rise from the unconscious, exorcized here through the solemn and magical rituals of painting.