Umbria pays tribute to Mimmo Paladino (Paduli, BN, 1948), one of the most well-known and appreciated figures of Italian contemporary art on an international level, and Paladino pays tribute to Umbria, its traditions, and its extraordinary landscapes, thanks to a series of initiatives resulting from the collaboration between the National Museums of Perugia-Regional Directorate of National Museums Umbria, the Municipality of Perugia, and the Perugia Foundation.

From November 8, 2025, to January 18, 2026, three of the most prestigious museum venues in the Umbrian national circuit - theNational Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, the Rocca Albornoz in Spoleto and Ducal Palace in Gubbio - will hosta comprehensive exhibition of Mimmo Paladino, curated by Costantino D'Orazio, Director of the National Museums of Perugia, and Aurora Roscini Vitali, art historian of the National Museums of Perugia, together with the artist himself.

Thanks to over sixty works from Italian and foreign collections, some of which presented only once and never again by the artist, a historical-critical narrative of the entire creative journey of Mimmo Paladino will be staged, highlighting the complexity of his poetics over more than fifty years of activity, from the seventies to the present day, and clearly illustrating some fundamental aspects of his career. The project benefited from the full collaboration of the Maestro, who made his archives available and personally participated in the construction of the exhibition path, where chronological and scientific criteria coexist with combinations that intertwine rigor and suggestion.

In Gubbio, some particularly significant works from the last two decades find space. A rather targeted choice was to include two works that involve the use of paper as a support: 1799 (2009), whose sheets with heads and faces are folded and fitted inside a ladder, reminiscent of poor art; 33 chants (2016), which still involves the fitting of sheets, but to compose a dance of human appearances, between light and shadow. This indirectly refers to the artist's impressive graphic corpus as well.

Paladino's anti-symbolic universe remains intact over the years, articulating an alphabet that does not refer to precise meanings: the presence of numbers, like a personal cabala (Untitled, 2007, Christian Stein Collection, Milan); the introduction of branches, light and airy extensions of many works (Untitled, 2016, Cardi Collection, Milan); animal presences, within an imaginative and evocative bestiary (the dragonflies of Mishima, 2021, Private Collection).

The exhibition closes with works created in 2025: the large canvas almost resolved in monochrome, where numbers, heads, and branches are found; the three "doors", namely three canvases where the presence of the human figure, black on a gold background, is placed within a trilitic scheme in intense red, architectural and, in a way, "perspective". On its surface, shapes and signs refer to the boundless depth of the author's figurative, material, and chromatic universe.