Leo Castelli, the first global gallery owner

To celebrate the new exhibition at Palazzo dei Diamanti, “Andy Warhol. Ladies and Gentlemen,” the MEIS is organizing a conference in its bookshop (Via Piangipane, 81). The event will be held on April 29th at 5:00 PM with Annie Cohen-Solal, Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University (Milan), historian and writer, who will tell us about the extraordinary figure of “Leo Castelli, the first global gallerist,” about whom she also wrote a famous biography (“Leo & C. Storia di Leo Castelli,” Johan & Levi editore).
Born in Trieste to a Jewish family, Leo Castelli was one of the world’s most celebrated gallery owners and collectors, also playing a key role in Andy Warhol’s extraordinary success.
Having moved to New York to escape persecution, he established himself in the postwar art world alongside his wife Ileana Sonnabend—with whom, even after the end of their marriage, he maintained a close relationship—and encouraged emerging talents and promoted them in museums. “The discovery of Jasper Johns, his favorite artist, and the acclaim of Robert Rauschenberg at the 1964 Venice Biennale,” reads the introduction to his biography, “are just the first coups he scored. Numerous other epiphanies followed—Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly, to name just a few—which confirmed him as a creator of legends.”
In her research, Annie Cohen-Solal roots her story in the distant past of the Castelli family, tracing their ancestors in Renaissance Tuscany and reconstructing a history full of persecutions, wars, ruptures, and displacements, which offers surprising analogies with the family’s more recent past and with Leo’s own story.
Annie Cohen-Solal, historian, essayist, and exhibition curator, is a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University in Milan. After earning her PhD from the Sorbonne, she taught at universities in Berlin, Jerusalem, New York, and Paris, and served as cultural advisor to the French Embassy in the United States. Her books include celebrated biographies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Leo Castelli. With “Picasso: A Life as a Foreigner” (2024), she won the prestigious Femina Prize for nonfiction in 2021. She has just published “Mark Rothko: Repairing the World” (2026) with Einaudi.

FREE EVENT. Reservations are strongly recommended by calling +39 342 5476621 (Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM) or emailing eventi.meis@orologionetwork.it.