Castelli's first American curatorial effort was the famous Ninth Street Show of 1951, a seminal event of Abstract Expressionism. In 1957, he opened the Leo Castelli Gallery in a townhouse on E. 77th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in New York City. Initially the gallery showcased European Surrealism, Wassily Kandinsky, and other European artists. However the gallery also exhibited American Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Friedel Dzubas, and Norman Bluhm were some artists who were included in group shows.

In 1958 Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns joined the gallery, signaling a turning away from Abstract Expressionism, towards Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art. From the early 1960s through the late 70s, Frank Stella, Larry Poons, Lee Bontecou, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Morris (artist), Donald Judd, Chryssa, Dan Flavin, Ronald Davis, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Salvatore Scarpitta, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner and Joseph Kosuth joined the stable of Castelli artists. In the 1970s Leo Castelli opened a downtown SoHo branch of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 420 West Broadway. In the 1980s he opened a second larger downtown exhibition space on Greene Street also in SoHo.

Castelli's first wife Ileana Sonnabend, whom he married in 1932, was also a formidable dealer of 20th century art. She ran a contemporary art gallery in Paris during the early 1960s after the couple divorced. In the 1970s, she opened another contemporary art gallery in New York, the Sonnabend Gallery. Castelli's second wife, Antoinette Castelli, opened Castelli Graphics, an art gallery devoted to the prints and photographs of Castelli Gallery and other artists. The couple also had a son together, Jean-Christophe Castelli.

In October 2007 Castelli's heirs announced the donation of the gallery's archives to the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.

References

External links

• Castelli's Oral History Interviews with the Smithsonian Archives of American Art: May 1969 ; July 1969 ; May 1997
• Portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe from ArtNews "Portrait of the Art World" exhibition