Exactly 21 years ago, in 1991, I organized the first great photographic exhibition at Via Della Spiga in Milan for Giovanni Gastel, at the time a very young and excited collaborator of “Donna”, the magazine whose I have been editor in chief for years. Now Giovanni is not here any longer, but both the regret and the memory remain of a brilliant artist who returns to via della Spiga in Milan thanks to an open air exhibition, "Flower", curated by Denis Curti, from 20 September to 4 October.
The floral theme had often been contemplated by me together with Giovanni Gastel, while he was carrying out his artistic research which he began at a very young age, in 1982, especially on our two most important magazines of those years, “Donna” and “Mondo Uomo”. This topic came back a long time later, after I left the publishing world, even if not toatally, so I decided to evaluate this subject for a tradition breaking exhibition in my new Myowngallery at Superstudio Più, where I experimented contrasting artistic languages ​​in different mixes.
Speaking about contemporary art starting from flowers seemed then an oxymoron. Those were times when cultivated photography and avant-garde art did not deal with romantic themes. They were not looking for beauty, but rather for provocation, politics, shock. I did not wanted anything of all that for this first exhibition which in my intentions should to look beyond, rescuing beauty and also romance and elegance.

For “Unreal Flowers” Gastel specially created a bouquet of tulips not proudly erect as they are, but sadly folded back on themselves, as in an intimate gesture, which perhaps only I could interpret in this way, knowing his intimate sadness.We went back to speaking about flowers, of beauty and elegance shortly before his passing, when I tried to persuade him to come and exhibit in a solo show in Dubai, in the animated and recently opened Oblong gallery, which already represented well-known and leading artists and among these also Flavio Lucchini. It was March, and we were talking about organizing an exploratory trip in September. But Covid took him away earlier, leaving us those “Gastelllian” flowers which never bloomed in my mind.Well, now they have blossomed unexpectedly and right in the place of their first great consecration in an open-air exhibition as it was then.“Flowers” takes up his brilliant intuition of combining the most classic photographic technique with the most advanced digital technology, all this metabolized by his dreamlike imagination able to transform reality into a tangible dream.“Through this selection of images dedicated to the natural beauty of flowers, I tried to collect and return Giovanni Gastel's very personal style”, explains Denis Curti, curator of the exhibition. “Being a cultivated and refined man, he has managed, throughout his artistic career, to create contemporary, timeless images. Here nature is narrated through an eternal and boundless sensual feeling. Flowers represents a synthesis of his aesthetic vision. A sincere declaration dedicated to ethical values ​​and awareness". The ones which have always guided him and wich the both the fashion world and all visitors will surely appreciate in this special moment of the Fashion Week.