Mimmo Rotella
Mimmo Rotella was an Italian artist, who was best known for his “double décollages”, which is the style of creating a collage that instead of building up the layers, has you tear layers away to revel photos and information beneath. Rotella in 1953 began producing his first décollages, with the compositions being made up of posters stripped off of outdoor walls in Rome. These posters were applied to canvas's that he prepared, and then further ripped apart. Though initially abstract, after 1958, he created figurative décollage, and produced the Cinecittà series, using images from film posters.
I think that his "décollages" are significant as they offer a new style for presenting information. I think that this process of tearing through layers is symbolic of air pollution, since smoke is able to corrode and over time destroy the surface of places, due its toxic particles. These "décollages" are similar to my previous digital collages as they present the same information, however this process of tearing apart layers is more destructive and visually depicts how air pollution can be destructive. Below is a couple examples of the collages that i made using my own photographs in the style of MImmo Rotella.
These are a couple of "decollages" that i made after being inspired by Mimmo Rotella. They are made out of exclusively my primary source photographs taken in London and of the people wearing masks. They depict air pollution from the tearing of paper which connotes the destructive capability of air pollutants. Moreover, i mixed charcoal into one of the collages to give it a darker and more bleak tone. Similar to Mimmo Rotella, i also scratched at the paper to make the texture of the more coarse. I proceeded to use these collages as the basis for my lino experiments, which helped inform the structure and layout of my final piece. The rest of the collages made that were inspired by Mimmo Rotella, can be found in the 'MIxed-media collage' section in the 'Idea Development' tab.