22 Facts About Leo Castelli

Leo Castelli was born Leo Krausz, in Trieste, Austria-Hungary, the second of three children of Italian and Austro-Hungarian Jewish origin.

Leo Castelli's father was Ernest Krauss, a Hungarian by birth, who had gone to Trieste as a young man and married wealthy heiress Bianca Castelli, from a family of coffee importers which had long been based there.

Leo Castelli's parents did not escape but died in Budapest, hounded by members of Hungary's fascist Arrow Cross Party.

Leo Castelli arrived in the United States in 1941, by way of Marrakesh, Tangier, Algeciras, Vigo and Havana.

Leo Castelli took graduate history courses in economic history at Columbia University until volunteering for the Army, serving in the intelligence service in Europe.

Leo Castelli soon attached himself to the pioneering gallerist Sidney Janis, one of the early proponents of the school.

Leo Castelli gave Johns, Stella and Lichtenstein their first one-man shows.

Leo Castelli opened a temporary annex, the Leo Castelli Warehouse, on West 108th Street, with a show organized by Robert Morris, of environmental sculpture by nine artists, including Nauman, Serra, and Eva Hesse.

In 1971 Leo Castelli opened a downtown SoHo branch of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 420 West Broadway, in a building bought by the Hague Art Delivery Company and a cooperative of dealers: Castelli took the second floor; his former wife's Sonnabend Gallery took the third floor, and Andre Emmerich took the top floor; while John Weber, rented his gallery on the fourth floor.

Leo Castelli later mounted joint shows with Mary Boone, of Julian Schnabel, in 1981, and David Salle, in 1982.

Leo Castelli pioneered a stipend system that was unknown in New York when he opened his gallery.

Leo Castelli put his artists on a payroll whether or not their work sold.

When Leo Castelli discovered Serra in 1967, for example, he offered him a guarantee of three years of monthly payments even though he did not expect to sell any of the unknown sculptor's lead-plate work in that time.

Leo Castelli was known for spotting new talent and insisting on European exposure for his American artists, leading to Rauschenberg in 1964 becoming the first American to win the Venice Biennale's international grand prize in painting.

In 1995 Leo Castelli married the Italian art historian Barbara Bertozzi Castelli.

In 2015, Bertozzi Leo Castelli opened a one-room satellite gallery at 1046 Madison Avenue, near 80th Street, with Robert Morris's installation Lead and Felt.

Leo Castelli received the rosette of the French Legion of Honor, allegedly in exchange for donating works by Johns to the Centre Pompidou.

In 1982 a traveling exhibit honoring the 25th anniversary of Leo Castelli Gallery visited the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 1988, when there were no tax deductions for gifts to museums, Leo Castelli gave one of the icons of postwar American art, Robert Rauschenberg's Bed to the Museum of Modern Art.

Leo Castelli had been interviewed for the archive's oral-history project in 1969,1973 and 1997.

The Leo Castelli Gallery continues to operate at 18 East 77th Street in New York under the direction of his wife showing many of the same artists from the gallery's past.

The Leo Award, presented annually by the Independent Curators International, is named after the late Castelli.