Enrico Castellani | Superficie rossa
Superficie rossa
1964
Acrylic on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches (100 x 80 cm)
© 2019 Enrico Castellani / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome
Photo: Stephen White
Dating to 1959, Enrico Castellani’s Superficies or “surfaces” comprise monochrome reliefs featuring dynamic topographies of taut peaks and depressions. To create them, the artist stretched canvas over patterns of nails hammered into elaborate, custom-built stretchers before applying an even coat of paint. As the light around a Superficie shifts, its surface becomes animated, extending the Renaissance technique of chiaroscuro (literally “light-dark”) into real space and time. Like his group Zero (1957–66) peers Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni (the latter of whom joined Castellani in co-founding the experimental gallery space Azimut, which published the short-lived but influential journal, Azimuth), Castellani refuted the traditional conception of painting as a transparent window, instead emphasizing the unity of all dimensions, both interior and exterior. In brilliant crimson, Superficie rossa stages a drama of shadow and illumination that responds to the eternally changing conditions of its environment, expressing what the artist termed “the concreteness of the infinite.”