--ANDY WARHOLA-- ALBERT EINSTEIN --88/100-- (LEO CASTELLI,NEW YORK)
EDITOR: GEORGE ISRAEL, PARIS
LEO CASTELLI ART GALLERY, NEW YORK STAMPS ON BACKSIDE
Leo Castelli (né Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. [1] His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades.[2] Among the movements which Castelli showed were Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Op Art, Color field painting, Hard-edge painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, and Neo-expressionism.[3]
Leo Castelli was born Leo Krausz,[4] in Trieste, Austria-Hungary, the second of three children of Italian and Austro-Hungarian Jewish origin.[5] His father was Ernest Krauss, a Hungarian by birth, who had gone to Trieste as a young man and married wealthy heiress Bianca Castelli,[6] from a family of coffee importers[7] which had long been based there.[8] After World War I, which the family spent in Vienna (where Leo Castelli learned perfect German), they returned to Trieste.[8] The family changed its name to "Krausz-Castelli" and then "Castelli" in the mid-1930s, when Benito Mussolini's government required names to be Italianized.[4]
After earning a law degree at the University of Milan in 1924, Castelli returned to Trieste, where his father had secured a job for him with an insurance company.[8] In 1932, he went to work for an insurance company in Bucharest, where he married Ileana Schapira one year later. After their marriage, the couple honeymooned in Vienna and bought their first artwork, a Matisse watercolor.[6]
Castelli's father-in-law, Mihai Schapira, helped him to be transferred in 1935 to the Banca d'Italia in Paris. There, Ileana's taste and money helped him start his first gallery at Place Vendôme in Paris, which was named for its co-director, the decorator René Drouin,[5] and situated between the Ritz Hotel and the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli.[9] Specializing in surrealistic art,[6] the gallery opened in July 1939, with a show of modern and antique furniture, including commissioned pieces by Drouin, Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, Leonor Fini (a former girlfriend of Castelli's from Trieste), Eugene Berman, and other artists in the force field of Surrealism.[5]
Ileana's connections enabled the couple to flee to the United States at the start of World War II. Castelli's parents did not escape but died in Budapest, hounded by members of Hungary's fascist Arrow Cross Party.[10] The couple would remain married for more than 25 years, and were friends and partners even after their divorce, when Ileana married Michael Sonnabend and that couple opened its own gallery.[4] Castelli arrived in the United States in 1941, by way of Marrakesh, Tangier, Algeciras, Vigo and Havana.[8] He took graduate history courses in economic history[5] at Columbia University[6] until volunteering for the Army, serving in the intelligence service in Europe. After the liberation of France, he was sent to Bucharest as an interpreter for the Allied commission that controlled the city. As a result of Castelli's military service, he was given American citizenship.[8] Returning to New York, Castelli took a managerial position with his father-in-law's clothing factory.[5]