Leonardo Castellani Biography
Leonardo Castellani was born on October 19, 1896 in Faenza, Italy. In 1914-15 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence for sculpture, where he studied alongside Osvaldo Licini. After being called up for military service, in 1920 he published his first book, 2 Quaderni. Some of his notable works from this period include The Walking Man, The Woman and the Fountain, and The Fiddler.
Subsequently Castellani founded the "Artistic ceramic workshop" in Cesena, which unfortunately closed after only two exhibitions. He held his first solo exhibition in 1927, and a year later he began teaching and working on intaglio prints as a self-taught artist. In 1930 he was appointed professor of chalcography at the Urbino Book School, where he created almost all of his chalcographic prints for a total of over 1500 plates.
In 1946 Castellani published 160 copies of the book Pages without frames, becoming the creator and editor of "Valbona" (1957-1961), a magazine where texts and engravings intertwine with rare elegance. He was aiming for eighty subscribers, including Leonardo Sciascia, but unfortunately he was unable to reach them in the nineteen issues before the closure.
Sciascia discovers Castellani's prose through Pannunzio's "Il Mondo" and gets to know him. A close friendship was soon born which led to the publication of Castellani's Quaderni di un calcografo in Sciascia's "i quaderni di 'Galleria'" in 1955. “Valbona” would then contain two texts by Sciascia: Il soldier Seis (March 1958) and Sambuca ( June 1959). Their collaboration continues with Sciascia writing the introductions to Castellani's solo exhibitions in Caltanissetta (1966) and Palermo (1975: Chiarezza e perfection), or paying homage to Castellani (1985: Ricordi in Sicilia, reprinted a year later as Essenziale dei signs e delle delle words). . Castellani contributed prose to Sciascia's bimonthly "Galleria" (1957: Viaggio a Settembre; 1959: Ragazze al cielo). Over the course of his life, Castellani had a prolific exhibition career, with 56 solo exhibitions and 158 group exhibitions, including many Venice Biennials and exhibitions hosted by the National Chalcography of Rome. Among his most important anthologies we remember those held in Urbino, Faenza, Klagenfurt and Milan (Castello Sforzesco). Castellani died on 20 November 1984 in Urbino.
