Leo Castelli , born Leo Krauss the September 4th 1907 with Trieste (then part of the Empire Austro-Hungarian), and deceased the August 21st 1999 with New York (the United States), was a merchant of art and American galerist.

Jewish emigrant Austro-Hungarian in Paris in the years 1930, it settles at the beginning of the Second world war in New York where it opens a modern art gallery in 1957 on Lexington Avenue. He exposes the European artists then founders of the abstraction like Wassily Kandinsky, then quickly of the American artists of the expressionism abstracted such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly. In the years 1960 and 1970, Leo Castellli makes the promotion of the most prestigious artists of the Pop Art by exposing Frank Stella, Lee Bontecou, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Morris, Donald Judd, and daN Flavin. It will also make the promotion of the Contemporary art as from the years 1980, exposing the current great names as Richard Serra.

Leo Castelli was married of 1931 to 1959 with Ileana Sonnabend, galerist who discovered with him the largest artists of the 20th century. It will remain like one of the largest American private promoters of Modern art and Pop art and one of the largest merchants of art of the 20th century.

External bond

• Official site of the galleries Leo Castelli