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Minimalist Castellani in Cambridge
The purity of the rhythmic surfaces of Enrico Castellani, considered the precursor of Minimalism and Conceptual art, can be admired in Cambridge in an exhibition on at the Kettle’s Yard Gallery until 23 June which has been realised with the support of the Henry Moore Foundation. Curated by Germano Celant and organised by the Fondazione Prada, the exhibition brings together around thirty pieces from a number of public and private collections from around Europe, a careful selection from the over hundred works carried out between 1958 and 1970 and presented at Prada in Milan exactly a year ago.
Castellani was the founder, along with Piero Manzoni, of the magazine Azimuth together with the Milanese art gallery of the same name. During the fifties, whilst all over Europe abstract art was undergoing major developments, the artist attempted to explore the expressive potential of two dimensional surfaces. With the use of simple repetition – the famous canvases filled with nails alternating the convex and concave – Castellani reduced the picture space to the basic elements of space, light and time, the absolute protagonists of the series of large monochrome reliefs. The colour used in the early work gradually made way for white “the absence of colour” according to the artist.
