- LEONARDO CASTELLANI ARTWORKS

- LEONARDO CASTELLANI PAINTER

Leonardo Castellani was a Italian painter, writer and engraver. Chalcography 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, 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 a great interest in all forms of art. In fact, he experiments with various types of artistic techniques: wood inlay, sculpture, painting, ceramics. But also writing, reading, watercolor and etching.

After graduation, he enrolled inAcademy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he meets the artist Osvaldo Licini and enrolled in the sculpture course of Free Andreotti.

In 1915 he was called up to arms and in 1920 he was discharged and moved temporarily to Rome, where he met Giacomo Balla It is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, exponents of Futurism, which will condition him in the realization of the works The woman and the source It is The violin player.

In 1925 Leonardo Castellani participates in the Rome Biennial and the following year also to Venice Biennial. During a period lived in this city, he knows Vincent Cardarelli It is Ezra Pound whose portrait he painted. He begins to perform ceramic works for the building industry and in 1928 he begins to teach decoration and ceramics in Fano. In this period, he performs 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 thirties, his style becomes more original. He begins to engrave landscapes full of vegetation with shadows and lights. The talent shown in this technique leads him to the chair of Chalcography in the School of the Book in Urbino. Here he remains to teach the chalcographic technique for 38 years to artists such as Nuncio Gulino, Arnold Ciarrocchi, Renato Bruscaglia, Henry Ricci, Walter Piacesi, Adriano Calavalle.

Leonardo Castellani founds the graphic magazine Valbona among whose members there was also Leonardo Sciascia. She has an important artistic, literary and engraving collaboration with him. We recall, in this regard, the works on Seis Soldier It is Sambuca. During his life, the artist produced more than 1,500 plates and held 56 solo and 158 group exhibitions in Faenza, Urbino and Klagenfurt.

Leonardo Castellani died in Urbino on November 20, 1984.