Art News

Enrico Castellani’s monochromatic embossed canvasses on view at Tornabuoni Art Gallery

PARIS.- From 14 October to 17 December 2011, the Tornabuoni Art Gallery will show a masterful retrospective devoted to Enrico Castellani through some 45 works of art. Known for his monochromatic embossed canvasses, Castellani (born in 1930) is a major Italian figure associated with the ZERO movement who, by rejuvenating the language of image and form, greatly contributed to the development of avant-garde artists in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. After distancing himself from the expressiveness of pictorial portrayal, Enrico Castellani proceeded to produce monochromatic pieces rendered dynamic by the action of disturbing elements: nails. Indeed, behind a canvas stretched over a wood frame, Castellani places nails that raise or lower the canvas and so create an interplay of light and shadow. The Italian Experimentation room opens with one of his works in the new contemporary collections area of the Pompidou Centre (level