Gian Maria Rastellini
Gian Maria Castellini was born into a well-to-do family in Buttogno, a village in the Vigezzo Valley, in 1869. His paternal grandfather Gian Battista gave him his first painting lessons.
He began to attend the Rossetti Valentini School of Fine Arts in Santa Maria Maggiore when he was still very young, spending some years there under the guidance of Enrico Cavalli. His earliest artistic production was a sequence of faces, painted in rapid succession and distinguished by an astonishing expressivity and vigour of form.
In 1889 he moved with his brother Gian Battista, also a painter, to Milan, where he immediately took example from more open-minded, innovative artists, his paintings taking on a vaguely symbolist flavour.
The most original of his works from the nineties are perhaps those he painted in the Vigezzo valley, in a personal, independent style. Also noteworthy are his pastel portraits, executed in a technique that the artist used throughout his career.
Rastellini’s production slowed around 1905, when he began to paint portraits exclusively on commission.
He died in Milan in 1927.
