Amalia Castoldi is a multidisciplinary artist. Trained as a pianist, she specializes in contemporary music. As a painter, she works within a horror-surrealist aesthetic and is also active in intermedial projects combining music and painting.
Born in Milan, Italy.
Resides and works in Milan, Italy.
Biography
Born in Milan, Amalia Castoldi began studying piano at the late age of 17. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Piano at the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan (2023), followed by a Master’s degree at the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Como (2024). Since 2019, she has been studying at the Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo in the advanced piano course with Giovanni Doria Miglietta. From 2023 she has focused on contemporary music under the guidance of Emanuele Arciuli, and since October 2025 she has been enrolled in the Specialization Course in Instrumental Musical Heritage (third-level master’s degree, solo contemporary piano) in Pinerolo, studying with Emanuele Arciuli, Nicolas Hodges, Ralph van Raat, and Maki Namekawa.
In 2023 and 2024, she was the pianist of the ensemble Laboratorio ’900 at the Conservatory of Como. In 2025, she took part in the Time of Music Festival in Finland, attending masterclasses and concerts, collaborating with Mark Knoop and Matthew Shlomowitz, and performing the premiere of Bach Studies (2025) by Ido Akov. She has also performed Italian and European premieres of works by I. Stölzel, J. Kleider, S. Wu, and B. Wolff. She was selected for the artistic residency precept.concept.percept XIV (Amsterdam–Ljubljana, November 2025 – June 2026), concluding with the 6th Bled Contemporary Music Week in Slovenia.
She has attended masterclasses with Clive Britton (including his annual Arrau Piano Surgery), Roberto Prosseda, Carlo Balzaretti, Roberto Plano, Giovanni Bellucci, Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Joonas Ahonen, Francesco Prode, and Andrea Lucchesini, as well as chamber music masterclasses with Trio Kanon, Tommaso Lonquich, and Marion Reinhard.
She has received awards in several national and international competitions, including first prize (99/100) in Chamber Music at the 8th International Music Competition “Città di Alessandria,” first prize (96/100) at the 13th “Città di Bardolino” Competition, third place in the final of the 23rd IMC “Maria Giubilei” (contemporary music section), first prize (97/100) at the 25th IMC Premio Lams Matera, and joint second prize (97/100) at the 11th IMC Artists Competition.
She has performed as a soloist at numerous festivals in Italy and abroad, including Piano City (Milan, Trieste, Lecce), Flying Notes (Fazioli), Piano Days Trieste, Summer Music Festival (Suoni d’Autore), Musica d’Estate (Accademia di Pinerolo), Piano Estense in Ferrara, Tucogiò Piano Festival in Treviso, Time of Music Festival in Finland, Piano Lab in Puglia, and Entropia in Bergamo. She has given solo and chamber recitals at Casa Boschi di Stefano and Casa della Memoria in Milan, Teatro del Mutuo Soccorso in Imperia, and for diCHIARAzione in Milan. She was also selected for a recital dedicated to Béla Bartók in the 2025 Piano Link season in Milan.
In 2022, she recorded a commercial for DHL and FIAT, performing the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata K.331. In 2024, she was interviewed by RDE Radio in Trieste, and in 2025 by Story Time, a podcast by Radio Canale Italia.
Alongside her musical activity, Amalia Castoldi creates intermedial works developed in collaboration with a composer, in which music, image, and painting are conceived as parts of a single artwork. Each project includes a piece for piano and live electronics, a video, and a painting, created through an integrated process. These works take shape as live performances accompanied by an exhibition of paintings, forming immersive audiovisual experiences. Her intermedial works have been presented at several venues, including the regional headquarters of RAI Friuli Venezia Giulia, Teatro del Mutuo Soccorso in Imperia, and Teatro Sant’Andrea in Bergamo.
Amalia Castoldi works mainly with oil on canvas and wooden panels, focusing on themes related to surrealism and horror. Her style combines elements of liminal space aesthetics, surrealism, and horror imagery. As both a pianist and a painter, she does not give titles to her works, choosing instead to identify them with opus numbers, as in musical compositions. This choice reflects her belief that, although her works depict figurative subjects, they go beyond simple representation and become expressions of specific emotions translated into form and color.
Her work has been showcased in numerous group exhibitions, including Ti racconto, vuoi? (San Giuliano Milanese, 2021), Croma (Rome, 2022), London Calling (London, 2022), Arte e moda (Milan, 2022), the live painting event Art Battle (Turin, 2023), In Conversation With… (Washington DC, 2024), OPEN ABOUT IDENTITY (Watchet, UK, 2024), and the International Art and Design Exhibition (Belgium, 2024), as well as the Mostra-concorso Alfio Paris (Bergamo, 2025). She has also presented three solo exhibitions accompanying her concert-performances: Resonant Paintings at the Giovani Talenti Festival in Imperia (2023), a new edition of Resonant Paintings at RAI Friuli Venezia Giulia in Trieste (2024), and Play: audio.image.exe at Teatro Sant’Andrea in Bergamo (2025).
Her work has been featured across several literary and art publications. In March 2024, Creo Literary Journal published an article about her, featuring her painting Op. 5 No. 24 (oil on wood panel, 30 × 24 cm, 2024) on the cover, which was awarded First Prize for Best Painting (article by Ashley Gantz, PhD; Creo Arts). The same artwork appeared on the cover of Art Magazineium, Issue 39 (May 2024), which included a selection of her paintings. Also in May 2024, Issue Twenty of Grim & Gilded featured a short biography and one of her works. Her painting was published alongside a short story in Cool Beans Lit, Summer 2024, Vol. I Issue 4 (edited by Lauren Avedis; art editor J.L. Stagner). She was further featured in the Visual Artists section of Passengers Journal, Volume V Issue 3 (2024), with both a published artwork and biography (editor-in-chief Anna Genevieve Winham; visual arts editor Lauren Viar). In July 2024, her work appeared on LMNL SPCS, published online together with Kendyl Harmeling’s poem Oh, Mama, Mama, curated by Ellis Cavalier and Kate William.
Artist statement
Castoldi’s artistic research unfolds within an aesthetic framework combining liminal spaces with cinematic horror, contemporary surrealism, imaginary spaces, and the unsettling emptiness of backrooms. Her influences also include the literary worlds of Kafka and Lovecraft.
Her practice develops along two interconnected paths: figurative oil paintings depicting atmospheres of abandonment, suspension, and perceptual distortion, and integrated multimedia compositions combining video, painting, and music (composed for piano and electronics). These intermedial works emerge from a collaborative process with a composer, in which visual and sonic elements are conceived together from the earliest stages.
Castoldi investigates physical and psychological distress, including body image disturbances, self-harm, depression, anxiety, and social isolation. Her work is deliberately pessimistic, unsettling, and agitated, yet often conveys fragility and delicacy. She aims to represent these states at the deepest, most material and unconscious level.
Her intent is to create immersive experiences that allow viewers to inhabit the emotional landscapes of her work, fostering empathy, provoking visceral reactions, and simultaneously communicating sensations of eternal calm and suspension from reality. Positioned within intermediality, post-surrealist painting, and emotionally-driven performative sound art, she employs oil on canvas or wooden panels, sometimes with nails or threads, and graphite or ink.
Her output includes collections of autonomous paintings and intermedial works, typically presented as 40-60 minute performances for piano and live electronics (video and tape) accompanied by an exhibition of paintings. She does not assign traditional titles to her works, instead cataloguing them with opus numbers, as one would for musical compositions.
Education/training:
2025 – ongoing
Post-graduate Specialist Courses in Music Performance – Solo Contemporary Piano
Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo – Pinerolo, Italy
Teachers: Emanuele Arciuli, Nicolas Hodges, Ralph van Raat, Maki Namekawa
2023 – 2025
Advanced Contemporary Piano Course
Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo – Pinerolo, Italy
Teacher: Emanuele Arciuli
2018 – 2025
Advanced Piano Course
Accademia di Musica di Pinerolo – Pinerolo, Italy
Teacher: Giovanni Doria Miglietta
2022 – 2024
Master’s Degree in Piano Performance (Second-cycle academic diploma)
Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Verdi” – Como, Italy
Degree awarded on: 4 March 2025
2019 – 2022
Bachelor’s Degree in Piano Performance (First-cycle academic diploma)
Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado – Milan, Italy
Degree awarded on: 28 October 2022
Residencies:
November 2025 – June 2026 – precept.concept.percept XIV, organized by [infra.norma.meta] (Amsterdam) in collaboration with the .abeceda Institute (Ljubljana). The residency will conclude at the 6th Bled Contemporary Music Week (Bled, Slovenia).
Selected exhibitions:
18 February – 4 March 2021: “Ti racconto, vuoi?” (group exhibition of finalist works from the themed contest “Radici”), Exhibition Hall, San Giuliano Milanese Cultural Centre, San Giuliano Milanese, Italy. Curated by La corte degli artisti.
6 – 15 May 2022: Croma (group exhibition), Centro Polivalente San Giovanni, Incarico, Rome, Italy. Curated by Irene Carlevale.
June 2022: London Calling (group exhibition), Badiani Art Space, London, United Kingdom. Curated by Art a porter.
September – October 2022: Arte e moda (group exhibition), Arcadia Art Gallery, Milan, Italy.
26 February 2023: Resonant Paintings (solo performance for piano and paintings), Giovani Talenti Festival, Teatro del Mutuo Soccorso, Imperia, Italy.
8 June 2023: Live painting “Art Battle”, Gianca Murazzi, Turin, Italy. Curated by Art a porter.
1 – 31 March 2024: In Conversation With… (group exhibition), The Gallery by Mui, Washington DC (online), USA. Curated by Maria Ilochi.
25 May – 2 September 2024: OPEN ABOUT IDENTITY (group exhibition), East Quai, Watchet, United Kingdom.
June 2024: International Art and Design Exhibition (group exhibition), V-Art Union, Belgium (online). Curated by Jean Janssens.
20 September 2024: Resonant Paintings (solo performance for piano, paintings, and lights), RAI Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Headquarters, Trieste, Italy.
Selected press & interviews:
Creo Literary Journal, March 2024
Article about me with the publication of my painting Op. 5 no. 24 (oil on wood panel, 30 x 24 cm, 2024) on the cover.
1st Prize for Best Painting.
Publisher: Creo Arts
Author: Ashley Gantz, PhD
Art Magazineium, Issue 39, May 2024
Catalog featuring some of my paintings, with Op. 5 no. 24 (oil on wood panel, 30 x 24 cm, 2024) on the cover.
Curated by: Artmagazineium.com
Issue Twenty, Grim & Gilded, May 2024
Short biography and publication of a painting.
Curated by: Carter Brighton
Cool Beans Lit, Summer 2024, Vol. I Issue 4
Publication of a painting accompanying a short story.
Editor: Lauren Avedis
Art Editor: J.L. Stagner
https://www.coolbeanslit.com/issue4
Passengers Journal, Volume V Issue 3, 2024
Publication of a painting and biography in the Visual Artists section.
Editor-in-chief: Anna Genevieve Winham
Visual Arts Editor: Lauren Viar
https://www.passengersjournal.com/volume-5-issue-3
LMNL SPCS, July 2024
Publication on the website alongside the poem Oh, Mama, Mama by Kendyl Harmeling.
Curated by Ellis Cavalier and Kate William
http://liminalspacesmagazine.com/oh-mama-mama/
Radio Interviews:
14 November 2024
Interview by RDE Radio TV broadcasting, Trieste, Italy
28 July 2025
Interview with the editorial team of Story Time, podcast of Radio Canale Italia, Pero (MI), Italy