Enrico Castellani

Born in Castelmassa, Enrico Castellani (1930-2017) studied art in Milan and Brussels, graduating in architecture in 1956. He settled in Milan, quickly becoming a leading figure in the Italian art scene. In 1959, he co-founded the magazine Azimuth with Piero Manzoni, exchanging ideas with artists such as Agostino Bonalumi and Lucio Fontana.

Castellani is best known for his monochromatic canvases, where nails beneath the surface create raised or sunken areas, producing dynamic plays of light and shadow. His work explores the rhythmic repetition of “empty” and “full” spaces, combining conceptual rigor with visual poetry, and is considered a landmark in 20th-century art.

He exhibited widely on the international stage, including the Venice Biennale (1964, 1966, 2003), Documenta in Kassel (1968), and MoMA’s The Responsive Eye (1965). Castellani passed away in Viterbo in 2017 at the age of 87.