Dominique Lévy gallery (Frieze Masters, E3) will present the first ever London solo exhibition dedicated to the octagenarian Italian artist Enrico Castellani, who associated with the Zero Group.
Emilio Steinberger, a senior partner in the gallery, has been thinking about such an exhibition for eight years, but Castellani does very few commercial shows. “He thinks things over very deliberately. There has to be a reason,” Steinberger says. The artist was ultimately convinced by the thesis behind the exhibition: pairing a selection of the white, large-scale relief canvases (Superfici bianca) that he has been creating throughout his career with the more recent silver metallic, angular paintings (Biangolare cromata and Angolare cromata) that he has been working on since 2010, and which he installs in corner spaces.
There has been a surge in market interest in Castellani’s work over the past couple of years, which Dominque Lévy attributes to the 2014 exhibition focused on the Zero group at the Guggenheim. The show at her gallery will “focus on light and space, both of which are at the core of Enrico’s creation,” she says. The marrying of the white and silver works promises to be “beautiful and elegant but also an intense architectural intervention,” Steinberger adds.
For those wishing for an early glimpse of what might be on offer, an early shaped Superficie bianca canvas (1962) by the artist is on show at the gallery’s booth this week, priced at E630,000. Also at Frieze Masters, Tornabuoni Art has a solo show dedicated to Castellani (A8).