LEONARDO CASTELLANI ARTWORKS

Leonardo Castellani was an Italian painter, writer and engraver. Intaglio printing represents a very complex technique in which Leonardo Castellani distinguished himself with a unique and refined style, becoming a master in creating shadows without contour lines but using different shades of gray giving a realistic and highly fascinating effect. Leonardo Castellani was born in Faenza in 1896. When he was 13 years old, his family moved to Cesena, where his father, a cabinetmaker, began teaching at the Industrial School, where Leonardo himself graduated in 1913. During his adolescence, he demonstrated an great interest in every form of art. In fact, he experiments with various types of artistic techniques: wooden inlay, sculpture, painting, ceramics. But also writing, reading, watercolor and etching. After graduating he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he met the artist Osvaldo Licini and enrolled in the sculpture course of Libero Andreotti .
In 1915 he was called to arms and in 1920 he was discharged and moved temporarily to Rome, where he met Giacomo Balla and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, exponents of Futurism , which will influence him in the creation of the works The woman and the source and The violin player.
In 1925 Leonardo Castellani participates in the Rome Biennale and the following year also at the Venice Biennale. During a period lived in this city, he met Vincenzo Cardarelli and Ezra Pound whose portrait he painted. He began carrying out ceramic work for the building industry and in 1928 began teaching decoration and ceramics in Fano. In this period, he performed his first self-taught engraving works. His first etching is a landscape dating back to 1928. His favorite techniques are drypoint and etching. After the 1930s, his style became more original. He begins to engrave landscapes rich in vegetation with shadows and lights. The talent shown in this technique earned him the chair of Calcography in the Book School in Urbino. Here he remained to teach the intaglio technique for 38 years to artists such as Nunzio Gulino, Arnoldo Ciarrocchi, Renato Bruscaglia, Enrico Ricci, Walter Piacesi, Adriano Calavalle.
Leonardo Castellani founded the graphic magazine Valbona whose members also included Leonardo Sciascia. He has an important artistic, literary and engraving collaboration with him. In this regard, we recall his works Soldato Seis and Sambuca . During his life, the artist produced more than 1500 plates and held 56 personal and 158 collective exhibitions between Faenza, Urbino and Klagenfurt. Leonardo Castellani died in Urbino on 20 November 1984.