Enrico Castellani
(Rovigo, 1930 – Viterbo, 2017)
Castellani was born in Castelmassa, Rovigo, in 1930. In 1952 he moved to Brussels, where he attended courses in Painting and Sculpture at the Académie des Beaux Arts and, in 1956, he graduated in Architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Cambre. He returned to Milan and began working at the architect Buzzi's studio, with whom he collaborated until 1963. In 1959 he made his first relief surface. Along with Piero Manzoni, who had established relationships with artists all over Europe, he took part in the experiences of the Zero group and, to show his work and make known that of other artists moved by similar tensions, he founded the magazine "Azimuth" and the homonymous gallery where, in 1960, he held his first personal exhibition. In that same year he was present with three relief surfaces at the exhibition Monochrome Malerei at the Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen and, with Manzoni, he exhibited at Galleria la Tartaruga in Rome. After a moment of "exile" in Switzerland, in 1973, he returned to Italy and moved to Celleno, a small village in the province of Viterbo. The artist died in Viterbo in December 2017.
Among his solo and group exhibitions, we can mention: Enrico Castellani (Galleria Azimut, Milan, 1960); Castellani (Galleria dell’Ariete, Milan, 1963); The Responsive Eye (MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1965); Lo spazio dell’immagine (Palazzo Trinci, Foligno, 1967); Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960/70 (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1970); Identité italienne. L’art en Italie depuis 1959 (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1981); Arte e Arti. Attualità e Storia, XLI Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte (Venice, 1984); Enrico Castellani (Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples, 1986); The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968 (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1994); Enrico Castellani (Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan, 1999); Enrico Castellani (Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento, 1999); Enrico Castellani (Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2001); POSTWAR: Protagonisti italiani del secondo dopoguerra (Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2013); Enrico Castellani, opere su carta (Matteo Lampertico Arte Antica e Moderna, Milan, 2015).
