(born Castelmassa, Rovigo in 1930)
‘Superficie bianca’, 2005, titled, signed and dated Castellani 2005 on the reverse, acrylic on shaped canvas, 100 x 100 cm, on stretcher, (AR)

View this three-dimensional object in our short Video.

Photo certificate:
Archivio Castellani, Milan, archive no. 05–028

Provenance:
Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples (certificate available)
European Private Collection

Exhibition:
Naples, Galleria Lia Rumma, Enrico Castellani, 24 May - 24 June 2006

Literature:
Renata Wirz, Federico Sardella (Ed.), Enrico Castellani. Catalogo ragionato, Opere 1955–2005, Skira, Milan 2012, Volume I, pages 64-65 with ill., Volume II, page 604, no. 1075 with ill.

„Ike-no-Taiga (1723-1776), a master of Japanese painting during the Edo period, was asked what the most difficult thing to paint might be. He answered, „Painting a white space in which nothing at all is being depicted“.
Adriano Sofri

A precursor of Minimalism, Castellani makes his work unique and recognisable. Its analytical and craftsman origin could be traced back to Mondrian’s geometrical abstraction, Tatlin’s Constructivism or the experiments of Bauhaus.Although he employs the traditional tools of a painter, he makes an utterly innovative use of them, for he places nails both on and under the canvas in order to create an alternating pattern and a contrast between introflected (concave) and extroflected (convex) points. The passage from one nail to the next and the deflection of light within the interstices they create result in movement. (Achille Bonito Oliva and Arturo Quintavalle, Castellani, University of Parma 1976)

By limiting the compositional variations and sticking to strict monochromy, Castellani creates works that aspire to the absolutely impersonal and do not demand to be read, interpreted or contemplated, but are simply what is visible to the eye: objects and subjects of creation.