Aldo Mondino

1938, Turin - 2005, Turin, Italy

Aldo Mondino was one of the most eclectic and unconventional Italian artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Trained in Paris at the École du Louvre and in William Hayter's studio, he attended the mosaic course at the Academy of Fine Arts with Gino Severini and Riccardo Licata, launching a highly experimental and cross-pollinated artistic career.
Over the years he moved through different styles and languages, with an ironic, cultured streak that made him unmistakable. From conceptual to figurative work, from mosaic to oil painting on linoleum, to the use of unconventional materials such as chocolate, unleavened bread, perspex and ceramic, Mondino was able to turn art into a field of intellectual and sensory play.
Often drawing on exotic and Eastern themes, and on Jewish, Islamic and Mediterranean imagery, his work is always infused with an affectionate irony, capable of breaking conventions and reactivating the symbolic meaning of images. His works have been exhibited in prestigious venues, from the Venice Biennale to the Palais Liechtenstein in Vienna, to the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. His works are today held in the permanent collections of major Italian and international museums.

Aldo Mondino

Tauromachia, 2003
Enamel on tiles, 60 × 60 cm

Tauromachia is one of the works Aldo Mondino dedicated to the theme of the bullfight, developed in a series made between 2003 and 2004. In this composition, the artist merges tradition and irony, epic gesture and decoration, using as his support a panel of white tiles on which he paints stylised figures of bullfighters and bulls in cobalt blue.
The compositional structure recalls both the classic iconography of Mediterranean maiolica and the visual language of playing cards or Iberian azulejos, enriched with symbols and letters evoking coats of arms, heraldic alphabets and mysterious references. As always in Mondino's work, art moves between image and sign, between play and ritual.
With the ironic, disenchanted gaze that always characterised him, the artist turns the ritual violence of the bullfight into a visual theatre suspended between tradition and parody, where the grid of tiles frames and crystallises the scene like a popular icon.
This work, now part of the collection of Stefano Rastrelli, testifies to the vitality of a contemporary art capable of speaking many languages, crossing cultures, and conveying, with a light touch, the depth of myth.