Estroflessione [Original Multiple in white plastic]. Accompanied by the book: Enrico Castellani Pittore

Milan: Achille Mauri, 1968. Thermoformed plastic multiple: 11.75 x 11.75 inches; 30 x 30 cm. Some minor age darkening at the edges, generally in fine condition, without cracks or abrasions. The book: 44 pages. Text by Vincenzo Agnetti. In Italian, French, and German. Photographs by Giorgio A. Colombo, Franco Angeli, Ugo Mulas, and Uliano Lucas. Original printed wrappers. Both enclosed in original publisher's printed cardboard box. One of 1000 copies of this multiple and catalogue, issued together in 1968 by Mauri. The multiple shares the characteristic play with light and shade created by Castellani's monochrome painted canvases stretched over nails. "Enrico Castellani strives for immateriality, to the point that even the paint materials lose their physical-empirical, sensual character, a means of emphasizing the intended otherness of the pictorial object. Castellani does not operate with concrete cultural references or archaic, mythical metaphors, for he is more concerned with creating suggestiveness through abstract, transpersonal, fictive-imaginative evocations of space, and these refer to and draw on intelligible realms where the potentiality of a permanent reevaluation of realities exists" (Lorand Hegyi, in 'Enrico Castellani - Günther Uecker,' Milan, 2013, p. 23.

Described as one of the most influential Italian artists of the 20th Century, Castellani was associated with the zero movement and Azimuth. In 1956, he met Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni, and the three are seen as the prime movers in pushing forward the Italian avant-garde. With Manzoni, Castellani founded the gallery Azimut and the affiliated journal 'Azimuth,' that distanced its own radicalism from Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel. They proffered a new objective language, and heralded works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein and Fontana, among others. His influence was also important in America, with Donald Judd seeing Castellani as the progenitor of Minimalism. Mulas's photographs in the text document a large number of Castellani's works during different stages of their creation. See 'Enrico Castellani, Opera Grafica 1960-1995,' no.10.