Barbara Bertozzi Castelli

Barbara Bertozzi Castelli is an Itallian art historian, curator, and art dealer. She earned her degree in Japanese Language and Literature at the University Ca Foscari in Venice, where she wrote her dissertation on the Monoha art movement of the 1960s. In 1988 she curated the exhibition "Monoha. La Scuola delle Cose” (“Monoha. The School of Things”) at the Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea in Rome. This was the first exhibition dedicated to the Japese avant-garde group to take place outside of Japan.

In 1988 she was likewise awarded a two-year Monbusho scholarship to conduct research on the Gutai Art Association at Waseda University in Tokyo. From 1988 to 1990 Ms. Bertozzi Castelli worked closely with the Gutai artists, often traveling the Kansai region of Japan for studio visits and interviews. This research culminated with two exhibitions on the Gutai Group, which Ms. Bertozzi Castelli curated at the Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt in Germany in 1991 and at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. During this period, Ms. Bertozzi Castelli also worked as an Italian correspondent for the Japanese art magazine Bijutsu Techo, in addition to working as a freelance critic and curator.

In 1993 Ms. Bertozzi Castelli received a fellowship from the Kajima Foundation for the Arts to fund a project that examined the relations between Gutai artists and the international art scene of the 50s and 60s. It was this research which first brought Ms. Bertozzi Castelli to New York, where she met Leo Castelli. Ms. Bertozzi Castelli eventually came to work for Castelli Gallery in 1999.