In 1959, together with Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani founded the art gallery Azimut and a magazine called Azimuth. Associated with the artistic groups ZERO and NUL, between December 1959 and July 1960, Galleria Azimut presented thirteen exhibitions, including Castellani’s first solo exhibition, and the important group show La nuova concezione artistica (The New Artistic Conception). Castellani dedicated himself to experimenting with different methods, using nails under a stretched-out canvas to form a sort of dance between light, angles and shadows; a technique that would later become his signature style. Castellani and Manzoni’s joint projects in 1959–60 established Milan as an important centre of activity for ZERO, a rapidly expanding international network of artists committed to redefining art and engaging light, space, time and movement. From 1963 to 1970 Castellani exhibited at a number of different galleries throughout Europe. It was also between these years that surface poetry began to give way to the subject, with Castellani’s attention changing its focus to study more on the formal articulations of the surface with his canvases becoming shaped, angular, diptychs and triptychs. In 1966 he won the Gollin prize at the Venice Biennale.
This early work was made in the same year that Castellani, Manzoni and Bonalumi founded the Azimut Gallery, and in which Castellani exhibited the first examples of what would become his characteristic Superficie works, manipulating the surface of his paintings from behind, creating undulating compositions of monochrome. This piece demonstrates Castellani's early investigations as part of the Zero movement, exhibiting many of the elements that he would carry forward into his trademark works of the 1960s and beyond. This artwork, accompanied with a certificate from the Fondazione Enrico Castellani, shows the creativity of a young, experimental artist on his journey to making a significant contribution to the Post-War artistic sphere.