Brilliant and Milanese, Alfa Castaldi was always seen as the sophisticated intellectual, the observer, the outsider when he sat with Ugo Mulas, Mario Dondero and Carlo Bavagnoli and the other artists and writers in the hot bed of intellectualism that burned at Bar Jamaica in the ‘50’s, where his first photographs were taken. Many of his early photos show a natural objectivity, an attitude he cultivated while a student of Roberto Longhi, who revolutionized art crticism in Italy during this time of rebirth of Italian culture. It was an intellectual approach of searching honesty; with beauty coming from reality, but artifice being necessary to capture it, that would be an idea he would explore in his work his entire life.
Brilliant and Milanese, Alfa Castaldi was always seen as the sophisticated intellectual, the observer, the outsider when he sat with Ugo Mulas, Mario Dondero and Carlo Bavagnoli and the other artists and writers in the hot bed of intellectualism that burned at Bar Jamaica in the ‘50’s, where his first photographs were taken. Many of his early photos show a natural objectivity, an attitude he cultivated while a student of Roberto Longhi, who revolutionized art crticism in Italy during this time of rebirth of Italian culture. It was an intellectual approach of searching honesty; with beauty coming from reality, but artifice being necessary to capture it, that would be an idea he would explore in his work his entire life.