Luciano Castelli

LUCIANO CASTELLI (Lucerne, 1951)
"Matador", 1986.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed.
Presents label of the gallery Dau al Set and Raab Gallery.
Measurements: 101 x 142 cm; 120 x 160 cm (frame).

Luciano Castelli is a Swiss painter, graphic artist, photographer, sculptor and musician who attended the preliminary course of the School of Applied Arts, where he studied with Max von Moos. He then learned to paint signs and became in the early 1970s the key figure of Lucerne Bohemia. Castelli and his residential community became part of art history through snapshots that the artist Franz Gertsch transformed into monumental photorealistic paintings. His "Medici," a group portrait of "the long-haired freaks around the strident painter Luciano Castelli," became the cover image of Harald Szeemann's documenta 5. Castelli, who showed a "Shiloum" in 1971, became a star of the art world. He owed much to Jean-Christophe Ammann, Szeemann's former assistant and director of the Lucerne Museum of Art, who put him in touch with Gertsch and invited him to Documenta. In 1974, Ammann showed in his influential exhibition "Transformer-Aspects of Travesty" androgynous photos of Castelli. Castelli's androgynous self-styling was influenced by the Glam Rock aesthetic, but then he began to probe other roles such as the young conservative, the movie star or the sadomasochist. In 1978, Castelli went to Berlin and joined the circle around the Galerie am Moritzplatz, to which he adapted with his expressive and fast painting. The painters who demarcated themselves from the intellectualism and severity of the avant-garde of the 1970s became part of art history as the Neue Wilde (New Savages). Castelli painted works together with Salomé, as well as with Rainer Fetting. Together with Salomé, he founded the avant-garde punk band Geile Tiere (Hot Animals), where he sang and played bass. The band was closely associated with the Berlin Jungle Club and gained notoriety for its raucous appearances. With Salomé and Fetting, Castelli undertook a tour of France in 1982 with performative concerts. In 1989, he settled in Paris. He experimented with a home-made camera obscura and developed his Revolving Paintings. These can be rotated 360° and have no defined top edge. Depending on how they are hung, the viewer sees different faces, bodies or views of the city. His photographic self-portraits have been published in a book by the renowned art publisher Edition Patrick Frey and shown in an extensive retrospective exhibition in Paris. In 2015, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing presents a major exhibition on the paintings which then moves to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai. In 2011, Gertsch's portrait "Luciano 1" was sold at a Sotheby's auction for 2.3 million Swiss francs.