B.

Twenty-nine prints by the young Italian artist Mimmo Paladino have been selected by Waddington Graphics, London and are toured in New Zealand by the National Art Gallery, Wellington and the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council. Their arrival in Christchurch at the same time as Edvard Munch: Death and Desire provides a fascinating contemporary counterpoint.

Mimmo Paladino along with Francesa Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Sandro Chia and other Italian artists belongs to a group known as the Transavantegarde. Seeing themselves outside Modernism and adrift in the incredibly rich cultural background of the Italian peninsula they have instead of these sources taken their imagery from the "lake of memory" – mythical, archaic and legendry.

Richard Caves in the catalogue to this exhibition writes, "Because the mythic content of Paladino's images is fluid and non-specific, they gain power from a chameleon willingness to take on the viewer's cast without fears and desires; our readings reach inward to our own subconscious, not outward to the common storehouse of legendary event. . . . With Modernism offering no language or allegory to deal with such ancient issues, Paladino elects instead to create his own shades that whisper to us about the realm beyond the River Styx."

Born in 1948 at Benevento near Naples Mimmo Paladino came to international prominence in the early 1980s in exhibitions such as the 1982 Zeitgeist in Berlin and his work will be of particular interest to those fascinated by glimpses of contemporary European neo-expressionism.

Jenny Harper, a senior curator at the National Art Gallery, Wellington will give a public lecture on Paladino at the Gallery on Sunday January 24, 3 p.m. Her topic will be "Mimmo Paladino and the Transavantgarde." For those interested in printmaking and contemporary European art this will be an important lecture and a fine complement to a fascinating contemporary exhibition.

('Mimmo Paladino: Etchings, Woodcuts and Linocuts', Bulletin, No.55, January/February 1988, p.3)