"Miro’ does not eat, but thinks"

GERMANA' MIMMO

Mimmo Germanà was born in Catania in 1944 and died in Busto Arsizio in 1992, aged just 48. Having moved to Rome after his classical studies, Mimmo Germanà, a self-taught painter by training, after a debut linked to the conceptual season, emerged at the beginning of the 1980s with the Transavantgarde, thanks to a wholly personal painting characterised by Mediterranean colours depicting dreamlike and mythological subjects, as well as the ever-present "Miro'", his beloved little dog, often present in his compositions. Germanà's art is excellently theorised by the critic F.Gallo, who defines it as "Mediterranean Expressionism", while S.Grasso rechristens him, with full merit, "The Italian Chagall". He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1980, in the "Aperto '80" section, which was curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Harald Szeemann. In 1987 he won the Gallarate Prize. Numerous solo exhibitions were held in private art galleries, documenting his intense activity as early as 1970. After his death, it is worth mentioning, in addition to numerous group exhibitions, the exhibitions dedicated to him in 1994 in Gibellina at the Orestiadi Museum of Contemporary Art and Foundation, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, and in Verona at the Boxart Gallery. After alternating fortunes on the market, his work has recently been rediscovered by the public and critics, and the quotations are rising, especially for his large-format works in which his poetics emerges strongly.