Signed "PHILIPPINES NUDE" / Luciano Castelli / 1985
Luciano Castelli (b. 1951) is probably one of the most provocative Swiss artists whose career spans over forty years. He came into prominence when exhibiting at famous Documenta 5, where Szeemann took a radical step in exhibition making. Castelli deals with painting, sculpture, graphic arts and photography with an expressive theatricality as critique of a puritan society. Self-portraits from the 70’ are marked by gender transformations, glam rock and performative androgynousness. Together with Salome and Reiner Fetting, he was part of a highly influential group Junge Wilde. Later he developed his own Revolving Paintings using camera obscura, which can be be turned 360° and have no defined upper edge. French psychoanalyst and art critic Jean-Michel Ribettes notices that „Castelli’s expressive theatricality is there to protest at the confusion of a gregarious, prudish, vilely mercantile period."
