Press

Marcello Castellani

Born 1989, Cali, Colombia
Based in Berlin, Germany
Painter since 2014
Oil, acrylics and charcoal on different surfaces

Marcello Castellani is a painter born in Cali, Colombia in 1989, currently based in Berlin, Germany. His career as an artist began in 2014, emerging from over seven years of work as an art director and illustrator in some of Colombia's leading advertising agencies. It was in that space between deadlines and commercial briefs where he began painting in his spare time, first on a digital tablet, then on canvas and wood. In less than three years, that private practice became a public one, taking him from Bogotá to his first international exhibition in Barcelona.

His work centers on the exploration of human duality: the coexistence of chaos and order, light and darkness, beauty and the broken. Portraiture is his recurring language — not as faithful representation, but as an emotional excavation. The gaze is always the protagonist, the point where the viewer is pulled in and held. Working from charcoal underdrawing through layered veils of paint, Castellani builds images that carry tension without resolving it, inviting the viewer to sit inside that ambiguity.

Since 2014, his work has been exhibited across three continents, with solo shows in New York, Berlin, Barcelona, and Bogotá, and group exhibitions in Brussels, Prague, Tokyo, and beyond. He has been featured in publications including IGNANT and Pousta Magazine, and his paintings are available through Saatchi Art. He continues to paint and exhibit from Berlin, where the city's constant flux of forms and artists feeds an ongoing search for a more personal painting.