The artistic research of Mimmo Paladino began in the late 1960s. Fascinated by the cultural atmosphere of the time, between Conceptual Art and American Pop Art, whose most representative artists had shown work at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Paladino worked at first on photography, often combined with drawing, a particularly congenial technique for him.
His first solo show was held in Caserta in 1969. In the 1970s his interest in the figure became increasingly incisive: from the initial conceptual experiments, his attention shifted to figurative painting. Geometric structures and objects like branches and masks appeared on canvases in forceful colors. In 1978 he was in New York, where the next year he had solo shows at Marian Goodman Gallery and Annina Nosei Gallery.
In 1980 he took part in the Venice Biennale in the Aperto '80 section curated by Achille Bonito Oliva; together with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Nicola De Maria, he helped to found the Transavanguardia movement.
In the 1980s his art became increasingly referential, involving large surfaces of great visual impact, representing life and the mystery of death. He used a range of different techniques: from drawing to engraving, painting to the insertion of three-dimensional objects on the canvases.
Starting in 1985, he worked on large bronze sculptures and installations: one famous project was at Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, where he made an enormous mountain of salt on which to place sculptures with forms of animals and human beings.
In the 1990s his activity abroad intensified, with great success, and in 1994 he was the first Italian contemporary artist to show at the National Gallery of Fine Arts of Beijing. In 1999, as part of the South London Gallery project, in a brick cavern under the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm, he installed the work I Dormienti, in a dialogue with the sound works of Brian Eno.
In 2003 Paladino was chosen as the representative of Italian art during the Italian EU presidency in Brussels, and the equestrian sculpture Zenith was installed in the plaza of the headquarters of the European Parliament. Centro d'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci of Prato, in 2002-03, presented a retrospective of his work, and in 2004 at the Reggia di Caserta, in the context of the project Terrae Motus, he held a solo show with his most recent works. In 2005 the sets created over the last 15 years were shown at the MAR in Ravenna, and the Museo di Capodimonte of Naples presented a work on Don Quixote which was a prelude to Quijote, a feature-length film the artist directed during the next year. In 2008 he was commissioned to make the covering of the scaffolding of the restoration worksite of the Ghirlandina, the steeple of the cathedral of Modena. That same year he had an important exhibition at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis in Rome, with the contribution of the musician Brian Eno.
Another important installation has been placed on the island of Lampedusa, to commemorate the victims of illegal immigration attempts. In 2010 a blue horse with a height of over four meters was installed at the amphitheater of the Vittoriale degli Italiani at Gardone Riviera (BS), the house-museum of Gabriele d'Annunzio; that same year he created the sets for “Work in Progress,” the tour that brought back together, after 30 years, the two singer-songwriters Lucio Dalla and Francesco De Gregori. In 2011 he completed the new permanent room of the National Archaeological Museum of Villa Frigerj in Chieti for the Warrior of Capestrano, opening an exhibition of sculptures focusing on the “new Warrior” set up in the spaces of Fondazione Carichieti at Palazzo De Mayo. Also in 2011, the city of Milan held a retrospective of his work at Palazzo Reale; in front of the building, on Piazzetta Reale, the monumental Montagna di sale (Mountain of Salt) was installed. In the same exhibition space, his works were also part of a retrospective on the Transavanguardia curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, together with those of the other four major figures of that artistic current.
In 2012 he presented the exhibition New Paintings at Galleria Mazzoli, showing a nucleus of multi-material paintings in which the dialogue between painting and sculpture is enhanced by objets trouvés like branches and pieces of wood, shifting from two to three dimensions.
In 2015 he again participated at the Venice Biennale, Padiglione Italia, with his own separate space.
The works of Mimmo Paladino are included in the collections of the most important international museums, including Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Lenbachhaus in Munich, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Tate in London, Museo di Capodimonte and the MADRE in Naples.
He has held exhibitions in important museums and institutions like MADRE Naples, Centro per l’arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, MoMA New York, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, MACRO and MAXXI in Rome, the Tate Modern in London, the Kunstmuseum of Basel, MOCA Shanghai, MUMOK Vienna. 

Lives and works in Roma, Bologna, Milan, Paduli.