Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.72 (608 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1400044278 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 576 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-09-09 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The Gallerist Christian Schlect An informative book on the post-World War II emergence of New York City as the center of the art world. It will also be appreciated by those wishing to better understand the stressful experiences, prior to World War II, of certain Jewish families in the Old World's Monte San Savino, Trieste, and Bucharest---business families that produced Leo Castelli, the naturalized American, and his first wife and life-long friend, Ileana.As Annie . Reich Claude said An entertaining biography that falls short of its main character.. Written by a former French cultural attaché in NYC in the late 1980's (who met Leo Castelli at the time), this book is an interesting, though somewhat frustrating, biography of one of the greatest art dealers in post-war America. The book dwells on Castelli's childhood in Trieste, Italy and on his youth in Bucharest,Romania, where he was to meet his first wife and later business partner Ileana (the famous Ileana Sonnabend) and . "superb portrait of life and times" according to dave. The rise of contemporary American art is a an oft-told story but this book offers an intriguing new perspective by showing how much of it depended on one man's entrepreneurial drive and personal devotion to artists. In that sense it's a rather inspiring narrative--certainly for anyone trying to launch a career at age 50 as Castelli did! It's also full of great insights about how the art world works, both from Castelli's artists and al
111 illus.; 4 maps. He reigned over New York's art world, with the Castelli Gallery the leading center of new American art and a lively meeting place for artists and critics including Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist. All rights reserved. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Pioneering gallery owner Leo Castelli (1907–1999) arrived in New York City in 1941 and opened a gallery 15 years later, at the age of 50. Yet Castelli emerges as a rare individual: a magnanimous lover of art. Cohen-Solal's biography fleshes out not only a fascinating portrait of Castelli but also the excitement of the developing American art world to which he was so central. . Cohen-Solal writes with energy, wit, and aplomb, and though she was a friend of Castelli's, she maintains a balanced critical distance, pointing to his initial misjudgment of Andy Warhol's genius, his perpetually complicated love life (with numerous mistresses and multiple marriages), his often frustrati
Leo and His Circle brilliantly narrates the course of one man’s power and influence. Leo Castelli reigned for decades as America’s most influential art dealer. Now Annie Cohen-Solal, author of the hugely acclaimed Sartre: A Life (“an intimate portrait of the man that possesses all the detail and resonance of fiction”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times), recounts his incalculably influential and astonishing life in Leo and His Circle. After emigrating to New York in 1941, Castelli would not open a gallery for sixteen years, when he had reached the age of fifty. Drawing on her friendship with the subject, as well as an uncanny knack for archival excavation, Annie Cohen-Solal gives us in full the elegant, shrewd, irresistible, and enigmatic figure at the very center of postwar American art, bringing an utterly new understanding of its evolution.. But Castelli had another secret, too: his life as an Italian Jew. His enterprise, which by 1980 had expanded to an impressive network of satell