Giovanni Gastel

His first contact with photography takes place in the 1970s. From that moment on, a long period of apprenticeship begins, during which he shoots pictures at weddings, makes portraits, small still-lives and occasional kids’ fashion photo sessions, while an important opportunity is offered him in 1975-76, when he starts working for the auction house Christie’s.

The turning point takes place in 1981 when he meets Carla Ghiglieri who becomes his agent and introduces him to the world of fashion. Following the appearance of his first still-lives on the magazine Annabella, in 1982, he starts collaborating with Vogue Italia and then, thanks to the encounter with Flavio Lucchini, director of Edimoda, and Gisella Borioli, with the magazines Mondo Uomo and Donna. From this moment on, his professional activity becomes more intense and he starts collaborating with the most prestigious fashion magazines both in Italy and abroad, most of all in Paris. During these years of intense professional commitment he elaborates his unique style, characterized by a poetic irony, while his passion for art leads him to introduce in his pictures the taste for a well-balanced composition. His references are, for his still-lives, Pop Art, which he could see on display at Rotonda della Besana since the early 1970s, and the photographic works of Irving Penn. Taking his inspiration also from the study of Renaissance Art, Gastel constantly goes back to an ideal of elegance he has been in contact with since his early youth, mostly thanks to his mother.

Around the mid-1980s, he founds Gastel&Associati with Angelo Annibalini and Uberto Frigerio, with which he intends to promote the introduction into the professional world of young photographers, either grown in his studio, or met during his many workshops.

His active commitment in the world of photography brings him closer also to the Associazione Fotografi Italiani Professionisti, of which he was President from 1996 to 1998. Since then he has been its Honorary President.

The artistic consecration takes place in 1997, when the Triennale di Milano dedicates him a personal exhibition, curated by the contemporary art historian Germano Celant, in which about 200 pictures, evidence of his long and prolific career, are exhibited. Gastel utilizes the “old mix” techniques, the junction ones, pictorial rielaborations, decouplings and stratifications, up to the digital touch-up.

His professional success consolidates in the following decade, up to the point in which his name appears on specialized magazines together with those of Italian photographers such as Oliviero Toscani, Giampaolo Barbieri, Ferdinando Scianna, or next to those of Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino and Jurgen Teller.

In 2002, within the La Kore Oscar della Moda event, he was awarded the Oscar for photography.

Honorary President of the Associazione Fotografi Italiani Professionisti and permanent member of the Polaroid Museum of Chicago, he carries out his working activity in his studio in Milan, where he continues developing his photographic research outside the patterns of fashion and also his passion for poetry ( his last collection is entitled “Cinquanta”).

A major retrospective of 40 years devoted to the photographic research, curated by Germano Celant, has been guested by the Palazzo della Ragione, Milan (catalogue by Silvana Editoriale, Milan). 

In Nov./Dec. 2017 the solo show “My Ladies”, curated by Valerio Tazzetti and Nicola D. Angerame, was presented at the Spazio Borgogno in Milan and was subsequently exhibited in January / February 2018 at the Galerie Clairefontaine in Luxembourg. A new portfolio “The Body” was published in 2019 by Gianpaolo Prearo Editore, Milan and presented in our gallery in Turin and in Milan with 2 selected solo shows.

The last Gastel’s solo show “THE PEOPLE I LIKE” was opened in September 2020 at MAXXI, the Museum of XXI Century in Rome. The artist passed away in Milan in March 13th 2021