Photographer Giovanni Gastel died in Milan at the age of 65 for Covid. Grandson of Luchino Visconti, one of the most famous Italian targets, he had been hospitalized for a few days in the hospital set up in the Fair. Born in December ’55, the youngest of the seven children had by Giuseppe Gastel and Ida “Nane” Visconti di Modrone, he was both a descendant of the Erba, Brianza lineage of pharmaceuticals, and of one of the noblest Milanese families.
With courage he had chosen at a very young age, as soon as he graduated from Zaccaria, to try the path of photography by facing a long apprenticeship without the support of his parents that he remembered with particular pride. The turning point came in the early 1980s when Gastel began collaborating with the most prestigious fashion magazines. And he gave the rise directly to fashion in the following years, signing campaigns for Versace, Missoni, Trussardi, Krizia, Ferragamo, Dior, among others. In the 1990s he pursued a more personal path, winning a solo exhibition curated by Germano Celant in 1997 at the Triennale. Over time he had also discovered a passion for portraits. And if Barack Obama could boast among the famous subjects, he generously loved to give free gifts to friends and acquaintances on the wave of spontaneity, perhaps at the first meeting.
Handsome man, generous, ironic, almost always more elegant than the models he faced, the nobility was certainly not a question of surname. He was, moreover, an admirer of the famous director uncle whom he frequented as a boy and of whom, observing him in the family villa in Cernobbio while maybe he was editing Ludwig, he appreciated many qualities. “Master of elegance, which is not effeminate mannerism, but a way of being, a cavalry education forged in the Middle Ages which is a key to my work”. In 2015 Gastel for his 60th birthday also gave himself an autobiography, An eternal instant. My life (Mondadori). He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Mufoco di Cinisello, a museum of contemporary photography in the predicate of joining the Triennale in Milan.
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