Enrico Castellani (Castelmassa 1930-Celleno 2017)

In 1952 he graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and in the same year moved to Brussels, where he attended the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts and graduated in Architecture in 1956 from the Ecole Nationale Superieure de la Cambre. In 1957 he returned to Italy and settled in Milan, becoming an active exponent of the new art scene. In 1959 he founded the magazine Azimuth together with Piero Manzoni, as well as the gallery of the same name, where he held his first solo exhibition in 1960. The magazine proposed a new beginning and total revolution of the previous artistic experience, based on a new pact with social progress. This revolution was realized by Manzoni, Bonalumi and Castellani using monochrome canvases everted with various techniques to create effects of light and shadow. In 1960 he exhibited three relief works at the “Monochrome Malerei” exhibition at the Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen and, with Manzoni, exhibited at Galleria la Tartaruga in Rome; in 1962, again with Manzoni, he exhibited at Galerie Aujourd'hui in Brussels and participated in the “Nul” exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1963, in Milan, he had another solo exhibition at the Galleria dell'Ariete; in 1964 he presented three works at the XXXII Venice Biennale and participated in the Guggenheim International Award in New York. In 1966 he exhibited in a solo room at the Venice Biennale, where he received the Gollin Prize; he spent time in the United States, making works that he showed in his first solo exhibition in New York at the Betty Parsons Gallery. In 1967 he was invited to make an environmental work for the exhibition “The Space of the Image” at Palazzo Trinci in Foligno. In 1970 he took part in the group show curated by Achille Bonito Oliva “Vitalità del negativo nell'arte italiana 1960/70” at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. In 1981 he participated in “Identité Italien. L'art en Italie depuis 1959,” curated by Germano Celant, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Exhibitions in recent decades include solo and anthological shows at Lia Rumma in Milan in 1999; at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2001; at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge University and Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels in 2002; at Galerie Di Meo in Paris in 2004; at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 2005; also, at Lia Rumma in Naples in 2006; and at Haunch of Venison Gallery in New York in 2009 and 2012. On October 13, 2010, Castellani received the Praemium Imperiale for painting.