Artist Profile: Aldo Castelli (Ascoli Piceno · November 9, 1900 — October 10, 1965)

ALDO CASTELLI was born on 9 November 1900 from a modest family of artisans from Ascoli. Already in his childhood he showed a strong passion for artistic expression and a precocious and unique ability in drawing, so much so that at the age of 12 his father, prompted by acquaintances’ suggestions and hoping to see him accepted as a student, introduced him to the “Fra’ Pittore” (“Brother painter”) Paolo (Augusto Mussini), who in those years was working at the frescoes in the convent church of San Serafino da Montegranaro at Porta Solestà in Ascoli.

Mussini immediately recognized the boy’s potential and gladly welcomed him in his studio, of which Elio Anastasi, Dante Corradini, Didimo Nardini and Pippo Poli were also part together with Aldo. Mussini was a generous and rigorous mentor, who educated his students to the most rigorous attention to detail: in a notorious anecdote that Aldo used to tell, “Fra’ Paolo” examined his drawings, meticulously “counting the leaves” on the tree that he was sketching. The very young Aldo shows an extraordinary precocity and is admitted to participate in the execution of the frescoes of the Capuchin church together with the older students, who all also act as models for various figures painted by the Master. The face of Aldo, wrapped in a monastic veil, appears as a nun in one of the figures depicted in the decorative lunettes around the main altar.

The relationship with Mussini grew and consolidated over the years into a deep friendship between the student and the Maestro, who asks Aldo to join him in Quintodecimo for the frescoes in the Parish Church, then in Caldarola to assist him in the realization of the frescoes at the castle of the Counts Pallotta. In 1916 Mussini wrote a letter of introduction to the Director of the Museum of Industrial Arts in Rome, presenting the young Castelli; and when Mussini leaves the convent in Ascoli to move to Rome, Aldo follows him to continue being mentored by him in his studio of via Margutta, while attending also the courses at the School of Applied Arts.

The Maestro’s death in 1918 is an event that sets in motion a crisis which leads young Aldo to abandon his studies (and the teeming cultural and artistic environment of the capital) to return to Ascoli, where he cultivates new contacts and enthusiastically embraces new inspirations. It was in those years that Castelli, attracted by the suggestions of the Art Déco and Liberty, gradually saw his detachment from the Mussinian style reach its maturation; this gives rise to the collaboration with the architect Pilotti, from whom imaginative projects arose, not all of which came to be: we still have some beautiful color sketches of those unused drafts, characterized by elegant, delicate lines and hues reminiscent of the bright chromatic palette of majolica. In fact, it was in those years – between the 1922 and 1924 – that Aldo cultivated his own training in the art of majolica and was one of the first three people hired at the historic and prestigious Manifattura Matricardi.

We have recently traced the roots of his experience with majolica in Rome: around 1920-1922 we have unveiled a series of elements documenting his ties with the SIPLA furnace in the capital, and his continued friendship and collaboration with the Roman artist Renzo Cellini, who offered valuable support and suggestions also in later years, when Aldo founded the S.P.A.D.A.

Tra il 1924 e il 1929 l’artista veneziano Umberto Bellotto, il dottor Bracciolani e Didimo Nardini partecipano con Castelli alla creazione di una nuova manifattura ceramica, denominata “S.P.A.D.A.”, il cui logo raffigurante una spada stilizzata è ben noto tra i collezionisti di maioliche d’arte.  La SPADA ebbe breve vita ma rappresentò una fucina di sperimentazioni innovative che lasciarono il segno, a dispetto dell’insuccesso dell’impresa – insuccesso dovuto largamente all’alto costo di quelle ardite sperimentazioni, che tuttavia ci hanno lasciato pezzi assolutamente unici e rari. Conclusa l’esperienza della SPADA, Aldo fu richiamato alla Manifattura Matricardi, allora diretta da Polidori, e alla chiusura di quest’ultima, collaborò anche con il laboratorio di Maioliche Artistiche Ascolane – fondato da gran parte delle maestranze della Matricardi. Successivamente Aldo fu consulente artistico della F.A.M.A., fondata da Nello Giovanili, dove conobbe la sua futura moglie, Ada Felicetti. Ada visitò il suo studio, situato al piano superiore dello stesso complesso dove risiedeva allora la F.A.M.A., e tra i due si instaurò immediatamente un’alchimia unica dove la “vaga leggerezza dell’essere” di Aldo veniva costantemente bilanciata e allo stesso tempo sostenuta dal solido e fiero pragmatismo di Ada, anch’essa innamorata dell’arte e singolarmente capace e competente a dispetto dei limitati orizzonti culturali offerti dalla famiglia d’origine.    

Between 1924 and 1929 the Venetian artist Umberto Bellotto, Dr. Bracciolani and Didimo Nardini participate with Castelli in the creation of a new ceramic manufacture, called “S.P.A.D.A.”, whose logo depicting a stylized sword is well known among collectors of majolica art. The source of the acronym is uncertain, although we hypotesize that it migh stand for “Società Per le Arti Decorative Ascolane” (Society for the Decorative Arts of Ascoli) – but the word “spada” in italian means “sword,” hence the dagger in the logo. The S.P.A.D.A. had a short life but it has been (literally) a forge of innovative experiments that left their mark, in spite of the company’s failure – due largely to the high cost impact of those bold experiments, which however left us a small wealth of absolutely unique and rare pieces. Once the S.P.A.D.A. experience was over, Aldo was recalled to the Manufacture Matricardi, whose artistic director was Polidori at that time; when the business closed at the end of 193o, one of its former employees took it over, maintaining most of its body of workers; Aldo kept working with the new owner Nello Giovanili who re-named it M.A., then M.A.A., and eventually F.A.M.A., (Fabbrica Ascolana Maioliche Artistiche – Ascoli Manufacture of Artistic Majolica). Aldo collaborated as an artistic consultant for F.A.M.A. for several years, and there he met his future wife, Ada Felicetti. Ada visited his studio, located on the top floor of the same building where F.A.M.A. had been relocated in Rua dei Fiori, and between the two a unique alchemy was immediately established. Aldo’s “vague lightness of being” was constantly challenged and at the same time enhanced by the solid and proud pragmatism of Ada, also in love with art and singularly capable and competent despite the limited cultural horizons offered by her family of origin.

A) Aldo and Ada in the F.A.M.A. workshop   •   B) Vase from the S.P.A.D.A. production   •    C) The Wounded Faun (Tile, F.A.M.A.)

In those years of multifaceted intellectual dynamism, Castelli had occasion to devote himself to theatrical expression in an amatorial drama company, to poetry, to journalism (as a correspondent for the “Giornale d’Italia” from 1935, with reviews of Theatre and Opera performances, and later as a collaborator of “Il Messaggero” with a series of articles on the city of Ascoli and its territory, illustrated with his original drawings).

Parallel to his artistic production – which gradually freed itself from the aesthetic standards of Liberty to arrive at a more mature and balanced compositional research that detaches and almost isolates him into a contemplative attitude – Aldo concludes his studies and devotes himself to teaching: from 1926 as a teacher of technical design at the Industrial Institute; from 1941 to 1950 as a professor of Art History at the Liceo Classico, then as a teacher of Drawing and Fine Arts at the Cantalamessa Middle School. At the end of the fifties, Castelli took part in the foundation of the Istituto d’Arte, of which he was Director from 1959 to 1962, then returned to teaching at the Cantalamessa Middle School.

In the last years of his life Aldo becomes more and more absorbed in his contemplative world, equally shy from fame and from conflicts, and his art becomes more and more a mirror of his intimate world made of silences and wonderment, of disillusions met by an innocence never broken. One of his poems, of a minimalist quality, seems almost an omen of his untimely end:

“Tentatively becoming
over the course of time,
stopping in one’s tracks on the threshold
of the last season,
with the surprised awe
of a betrayed child
and the desperate candor
of a poet
without song”

One of his last paintings, from the summer of 1964, communicates an intense emotionality that reflects the same astonished innocence and the tender and dignified surrender with which his loved ones watch him slowly yield to the devastation of an incurable disease. Aldo departs from life in Ascoli, comforted by the presence of Ada and his family, on October 10, 1965.