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Everyone knows what a painting canvas is for. Simply put, it is a surface on which a painting will be painted, be still life, portrait, modern abstraction – the only limit is the artist’s imagination. But what happens, when an artist’s imagination goes beyond the current framework of art? Well, then an ordinary canvas may become a new tool for expressing artistic vision.

Everyone knows what a painting canvas is for. Simply put, it is a surface on which a painting will be painted, be still life, portrait, modern abstraction – the only limit is the artist’s imagination. But what happens, when an artist’s imagination goes beyond the current framework of art? Well, then an ordinary canvas may become a new tool for expressing artistic vision.

This is the case with Enrico Castellani, considered by many one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, the father of minimalism, the painter of light. What pushed the artist to recur to such unconventional choices? As is often the case in art, new trends emerge, when artists are no longer content with the existing means of expression.Castellani was bored with the fact that many artists in the 1950s were either still inspired by Picasso and surrealism, or used abstract expressionism (you can read about action painting, one of the branches of that movement, here), which for him was too heavy on emotions. In 1959, together with Piero Manzoni, he founded the art gallery Azimuth, which was meant to provide an outlet for new trends in art.

A perfect example of this novelty were the canvases of Lucio Fontana – a trail-blazing artist, who revolutionized the approach to canvas. Fontana wouldn’t hesitate to literally cut through canvases, and in so doing, transform an originally flat surface into a three-dimensional artwork. Enrico Castellani picked up on that idea, but went even further than that. He invented a unique technique that transformed a two-dimensional canvas into a three-dimensional object resembling a bas-relief. Let us note that Castellani studied not only painting, but also sculpture and architecture, and it was that need for three-dimensional expression that got him where it did!

Castellani’s hallmark was the single-color paintings from the “Superficie” (Surface) series, for the use of which, instead of paints, he used nails. Traditionally, the canvas is stretched over a rectangular or square loom, that is a wooden frame. Castellani, however, created special surfaces consisting of many strips into which he would hammer nails at various depths. This caused the canvas to gain indentations and convexities. On top, very painterly chiaroscuros were formed, giving a different effect depending on the direction of the light and its intensity.

Over time, the artist composed increasingly more complex nail patterns and covered the canvases with not only white, but also red, blue or silver paint, which would make the surface look like an aluminum sheet. Knowing that computer screens don’t quite do justice do such three-dimensional creations, please wait till you see them live, before you write them off as yet another pretentious, artsy whim.

transl. Jakub Majchrzak