Between 1957 and 1982 , Leo Castelli is one of the key figures of the artistic scenery of NY. His life reads like a novel. He is born in 1907 in Trieste. In 1939, he immigrates to NY, where he soon gets known as a genuine art connoisseur. In 1957, at the age of 50, he opens the ”Castelli Gallery” in Manhattan. He discovers 15 major American artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Frank Stella and Roy Lichtenstein. He promotes all major American Pop-Artist (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, Oldenburg), Minimalists (Judd, Flavin, Morris) and Post-Conceptualists (Serra, Nauman, Sonnier). From 1962 onwards, he promotes all these artists in Paris via the Sonnabend Gallery of his ex-wife Ileana. Within the USA, he starts to promote them in satellite galleries in LA, San Francisco, St Louis, Chicago, Houston, Miami… This way, he could reach the new wealthy American and European collectors, who were eager to buy American Art. For a quarter of a century, he had a -monopoly on American Art and determined the whereabouts of the creations of his artists…

A story of the founder of the present-day art gallery