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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archivio Enrico Castellani, Milan, under no. 76-010.
Credited as one of the most important precursors of minimalism and conceptualism, Enrico Castellani was an instigator of a movement in the sixties that took a radical evaluation of pictorial practice. Sweeping away any hint of figurative representation or the romantic sensibility and existential angst of the prevailing Arte Informel, Castellani established an iconoclastic art that was anti-content and that did not presume to convey any message other than the pure structure of what it was. Along with his friend and colleague Piero Manzoni, Castellani sought to remove the personal from art in order to investigate its constructs, challenging the mystique of the creator to accord artistic value solely to the concrete reality of the canvas. Rather than a passive field for the outpourings of the soul, the canvas became a pure entity, representing nothing, but simply being.
Castellani uses the mathematically precise pattern of a grid in his Superficie alluminio to remove any sense of subjective involvement in the process of its creation, treating the canvas as a spatial reality with which he interferes only to attest to its reality. Personalized brushwork and illusionary representation are eschewed, eliminating emotional elements to produce an artform that can be appreciated for its surface qualities alone. Extending on the example set by Lucio Fontana's slashed paintings, the optical distortions affected by Castellani's protruding abstractions reveal his interest in the phenomena of light and movement and his desire to bridge the gap between painting and sculpture. The taught membrane of canvas straining from the stretcher frame over the low relief elements provides a sculptural aspect to the canvas, thereby asserting its presence as an object by projecting into the viewer's domain. Despite the evenly applied monochromatic pigment, Castellani produces an illusion of shadow and light, with broad ranging tonal and perspectival effects amplified by the highly reflective nature of the metallic surface. The variegated light that plays over the matrix of peaks and troughs creates the illusive visual effect of dark lines and glaring spots that shift and vanish according to the location of the viewer and the ambient light of the surrounding environment. The slick silver surface mimics an industrial material, but Castellani's work is handmade, constructed only of the tools and constituents traditionally associated with painting - a wooden frame, nails, canvas and paint - to examine the intrinsically delimiting nature of the medium. Although Superficie alluminio retains the materials and format typical of painting, it is far removed from a window upon the world or an reflection of the self, standing instead as a perfectly self-contained object whose aesthetic simplicity can be understood by all.
Credited as one of the most important precursors of minimalism and conceptualism, Enrico Castellani was an instigator of a movement in the sixties that took a radical evaluation of pictorial practice. Sweeping away any hint of figurative representation or the romantic sensibility and existential angst of the prevailing Arte Informel, Castellani established an iconoclastic art that was anti-content and that did not presume to convey any message other than the pure structure of what it was. Along with his friend and colleague Piero Manzoni, Castellani sought to remove the personal from art in order to investigate its constructs, challenging the mystique of the creator to accord artistic value solely to the concrete reality of the canvas. Rather than a passive field for the outpourings of the soul, the canvas became a pure entity, representing nothing, but simply being.
Castellani uses the mathematically precise pattern of a grid in his Superficie alluminio to remove any sense of subjective involvement in the process of its creation, treating the canvas as a spatial reality with which he interferes only to attest to its reality. Personalized brushwork and illusionary representation are eschewed, eliminating emotional elements to produce an artform that can be appreciated for its surface qualities alone. Extending on the example set by Lucio Fontana's slashed paintings, the optical distortions affected by Castellani's protruding abstractions reveal his interest in the phenomena of light and movement and his desire to bridge the gap between painting and sculpture. The taught membrane of canvas straining from the stretcher frame over the low relief elements provides a sculptural aspect to the canvas, thereby asserting its presence as an object by projecting into the viewer's domain. Despite the evenly applied monochromatic pigment, Castellani produces an illusion of shadow and light, with broad ranging tonal and perspectival effects amplified by the highly reflective nature of the metallic surface. The variegated light that plays over the matrix of peaks and troughs creates the illusive visual effect of dark lines and glaring spots that shift and vanish according to the location of the viewer and the ambient light of the surrounding environment. The slick silver surface mimics an industrial material, but Castellani's work is handmade, constructed only of the tools and constituents traditionally associated with painting - a wooden frame, nails, canvas and paint - to examine the intrinsically delimiting nature of the medium. Although Superficie alluminio retains the materials and format typical of painting, it is far removed from a window upon the world or an reflection of the self, standing instead as a perfectly self-contained object whose aesthetic simplicity can be understood by all.