(born in Castelmassa, Rovigo in 1930)
Superficie Rossa, 2005, signed, titled and dated Castellani-Superficie rossa-2005 on the reverse, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Archivio Castellani, Milan, archive no.05–001

Provenance:
Galleria Fumagalli, Bergamo
Private Collection, Rome
Mazzoleni Galleria d’Arte, Turin
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Turin, La Concretezza ritmica dell’infinito, Galleria d’Arte Mazzoleni. 25 October 2013- 31January 2014, exh. cat. p. 58 with ill.

Literature:
M. Smarrelli, Risonanze #1. Enrico Castellani & Uto Ughi, Skira (ed.), Milan 2006, p. 78
R. Wirz, F. Sardella (ed.), Enrico Castellani. Catalogo ragionato, Opere 1955–2005, Skira (ed.), Milan 2012, vol. II, p. 605, no. 1078 with ill.

Your Imperial Highness Prince Hitachi and your Highnes Princess Hitachi, your Excellencies, distinguished members of the selection committee, ladies and gentlemen.

It is not due to special merit but thanks to my age that I have the honour to thank you all, also in the name of the other laureates of this important and coveted prize.

Since its establishments twenty years ago, the Praemium Imperiale has been awarded to the most eminent artists of the five continents. […] As I am the first Italian to be awarded this prize for painting I feel that I have the duty to mention some artists, both friends and leading exponents who, had they not died prematurely, would have been equally worthy of this honour. I would like to spiritually associate these artists with the acknowledgment awarded to me today. My thoughts go: to Lucio Fontana, who produced a revolution in the conception of space and the surface; to Piero Manzoni, who instituted a new and different way of understanding art; to Alberto Burri, who is universally known and to whom we owe the invention of a new materic quality in painting; and finally to my very dear friend Piero Dorazio for his rigorous analytical study regarding the pictorial surface.

Personally speaking, this prize is particularly appreciated because sentimentally it takes me back to the 1960s when Milan was the “stop-off” for many Japanese artists. […] And during these years a number of Japanese art critics were among the first to acknowledge my work, seeing in it some consonance with Zen philosophy of emptiness, absence, and nothingness.

Speech delivered by Enrico Castellani on the occasion of receiving the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo, 13 October 2010

“I approach the surface with minimal essential actions with the result of making it identifiable, to avoid the risk of making a redundant statement. In the gestures that I act out on canvas, there is no violence but only the necessary energy useful for the completion of the work”
Enrico Castellani