Enrico Castellani was born in Castelmassa, Rovigo, in 1930. He moved to Brussels in 1952 where he studied Painting and Sculpture at the Académie des Beaux Arts before graduating in architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Cambre in 1956. In the same year he returned to Milan, where he worked in the office of the architect Buzzi until 1963. Together with Piero Manzoni, he founded the magazine “Azimuth” and a gallery of the same name. In 1959 Castellani created his first painting in relief, giving rise to a poetics that would be his constant and rigorous stylistic hallmark and defining what critics have called "different repetition." Since then, his proceeding has continued to develop in the sphere of extroversion, but in his compact and coherent production we find some works that depart sharply from the relief surfaces, revealing much about themes dear to Castellani such as time, rhythm and space.
A series of important exhibitions in public and private spaces followed from his debut until today. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1964, 1966, 1984 and 2003.
Castellani lived and worked in Celleno until his last days. He died on December 1, 2017.