One of the women of Italian and Milanese music and culture passed away this morning, January 28, 2024. She is Anna Gastel, sister of the famous photographer Giovanni Gastel who passed away in 2021. A profession that also shares that of her son, Guido Taroni, brilliant art photographer and grew up right among Uncle Giovanni’s cameras. She was the granddaughter of the great director Luchino Visconti. Gastel also passed away due to a series of complications related to Covid. In 2015 she was appointed president of the MITO Settembre Musica Festival and took office the following year.
The expression with which Anna Gastel has always loved to identify herself was: experience. “I have always been attracted to gaining experience and therefore I experience changes with interest and curiosity, also with a view to personal enrichment”, she declared. Starting from the world of cinema. The one discovered as her six brothers, including Giovanni, through “uncle Luchino”. And her illustrious uncle wanted her on the set in her early twenties and had her act in “The Innocent”, her last film directed by Visconti.
Born in Milan in 1953, raised and trained between Cernobbio and Milan, in 1977 she graduated from the Catholic University of Milan in literature and philosophy with an artistic focus with 110 cum laude after a thesis in the history of entertainment entitled: “Music is constant in the life of Luchino Visconti, man and artist”. Just like her brother Giovanni, in her the legacy of a refined world, but always lived and read in a contemporary key. Great-grandson of Don Guido Visconti di Modrone, president of the La Scala Theater since 1898, granddaughter of Don Giuseppe, president of Inter-Ambrosiana, Anna Gastel was the first woman auctioneer at Christie’s and subsequently also became vice-president of You do.
If Giovanni Gastel was the timeless gentleman with indecipherable charm, traits that his nephew Guido Taroni also inherited, Anna Gastel equally represented a cultured international feminine Milanese. It was enough to see her recount the events of her ancestral family mansion. That Villa Erba commissioned at the end of the nineteenth century by Luigi Erba and Anna Brivio, then the summer residence of the legendary woman Carla Erba, Giuseppe Visconti and their seven children (including Luchino) and then of their grandchildren. Residence overlooking the shores of Lake Como and the splendid garden. Since 1985, the residence has been owned by a series of public bodies. But its beauty needed to be preserved and told. So who better than a woman of natural elegance and spontaneous class like her to do it? So here she is the protagonist of a short docu-film, born from a project organized by the digital platform The Origin exclusively for Orticolario.
He sees her transforming into the exceptional guide for the public preparing for the virtual visit of Villa Erba (orticolario.it). Â «The idea came from Moritz Mantero – he explained on the occasion of the launch of the project -. A childhood friend with whom we used to spend our summers at the lake and who, wanting to visit the villa, thought of asking me to be his guide. Now I’m just a neighbour, as my family has maintained their part of the garden and the ancient Villa Erba, which is not the large one, but which derives from a 12th century convent, then transformed into a residence at the beginning of the 19th century”.
Art in all its forms could only be Anna Gastel’s world. She was a great travel enthusiast and her favorite half was the Far East, particularly Japan. The experience at Cristhies’ began with the hiring in London after arriving first out of 40 students from all over the world in the first course established by the English auction house in the history of antiques, a course organized by Robert Cummings, director of the Tate Gallery . After four years she chooses the Rome venue and becomes the first female batsman in Cristhies’ history.
Subsequently, he collaborated with the Macchiaioli Archive, as assistant to Luisa Vertova Nicholson and worked on the drafting of Giovanni Boldini’s catalog raisonné. She is passionate about music and singing which she had also studied for years and is the voice of a Lombard jazz group. Then in 2016 the adventure began at the helm of Mito on behalf of the Mayors of Milan and Turin, divine President of the MITO SettembreMusica International Festival.
He traveled extensively, especially in the Far East and Japan, dealing for years with decoration and designs for fabrics. She loves music and singing which she studied and was the voice of a Jazz group that performed for some years in various venues in Lombardy. In 2006, at the request of the then President Giulia Maria Crespi, she began to collaborate with the FAI – Fondo Ambiente Italiano, in 2008 she joined the FAI Board of Directors as a Councilor and was appointed President of FAI Lombardia, in 2009 she became a member of the Executive Committee of YOU DO; between 2010 and 2012 she thought about and built “FAIGiovani”, a highly successful project and renewal of the Foundation of which she is “Godmother”; in 2011 you founded FAI Swiss, an autonomous foundation under Swiss law, of which you are a director; in 2013 she was appointed National Vice President of the FAI and she left the Presidency of FAI Lombardy after having founded the “FAI Groups” in the area in four years and increased the Lombard membership from 13,000 to 38,000. On 26 October 2015, having completed the five-year FAI-Expo2015 SpA “Via Lattea” project, aimed at mapping, studying, presenting and promoting the territory, of which she was the creator and manager with over 700 volunteers following, she resigned. to the FAI Board of Directors as National Vice President, as a Councilor and as a member of the Executive Committee.
2024-01-28 18:12:19
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