Enrico Castellani

Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan
Galleria La Polena, Genova
Daniele Ugolini, Florence
Galleria Tornabuoni, Florence
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2005

Paris, Galerie Lawrence, Enrico Castellani, 1965
Rome, Galleria La Tartaruga, Enrico Castellani, November - December 1965
Turin, Galleria Notizie, Enrico Castellani, January 1966
Parma, Universitá di Parma, Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Enrico Castellani, 1976, no. 45, illustrated
Ravenna, Loggetta Lombardesca Pinacoteca Comunale, Enrico Castellani, June - September 1984, p. 129, illustrated
New York, Albert Totah Gallery, Enrico Castellani, May - June 1987, p. 8, illustrated
London, Albert Totah Gallery, Enrico Castellani, December 1987, p. 8, illustrated
Milan, Fondazione Prada, Enrico Castellani, April - June 2001, pp. 182-183

Vincenzo Agnetti, Enrico Castellani Pitttore, Milan, 1968, p. 30, illustrated
Adachiara Zevi, Castellani, Ravenna, 1984, p. 128

Enrico Castellani shared with Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana a desire to dramatically alter the artistic tendencies of their time and to break with the cultural traditions of Italy’s past. They rejected the gestural art of Abstract Expressionism in favor of an analytical and rational approach to the pictorial surface. 1958, 1959 and 1960 were three crucial years in the Italian artistic scene: in 1958 Manzoni created his first Achrome, in 1959 Fontana cut his first Concetto Spaziale canvas, and in 1959 Castellani executed his first Superficie in relief. In 1960 Castellani and Manzoni founded the short-lived magazine Azimuth, and the gallery Azimuth, which were revolutionary in their impact upon Italian art. In his 1965 Manifesto of Minimalism, Donald Judd identified Castellani and Yves Klein as the most important European precursors of minimalism and conceptualism.

In a time of great artistic ferment, Castellani pursued his own line of investigation in which elements such as space, light and time played a leading role. With his first Superficie in relief, Castellani’s rigorously monochromatic work focused aesthetically on the treatment imposed on the canvas. As in Dittico Nero-Argento, Castellani fastened his canvas onto a relief built up from nails for a three-dimensional effect: in this way, some parts of the canvas project outwards, in contrast to other areas which form indentations, to create sequences of protruding points, divergent angles and waves of light. By exploring the optical possibilities of the surface, Castellani developed Fontana’s revolutionary Concetto Spaziale further, exploiting the relationship between space and light as dynamic elements that define painting.

Castellani works in monochromatic colors of white, black or gray, preferring a non-color that makes objectification as perceptible as possible, suggesting the concept of absence. For the artist, the need to find new modes of expression without any traditional point of reference reflects his desire to find the Absolute in art. In order to reach this goal, he starts from elementary entities – a line, an indefinitely repeatable rhythm - to give the works themselves the concreteness of infinity.