Born in Turin in 1938, Laura Castagno lives and works in Italy and in Germany. Her classical studies taught her the method of writing as a tool of analysis and constructiveness. She graduated in architecture from Turin Polytechnic. In the sixties, she worked in Utopian architecture and cybernetics applied to art and architecture and taught architectural history in universities and research institutes.

Working in the field of the visual arts since the early sixties, she proposed a conceptual approach to sign in simple and complex organisations. That first period produced her folded papers, in which the act of folding induced the paper to become three-dimensional. She was an earl practitioner of installation art in the area of the relationship between sign and meaning.

In the eighties, she took an interest in time-space relationships – movement, tension and energy – which led her to create large-scale sculptures and installations with mobile, vibrant, tense signs subject to the force of gravity, in indoor room spaces, in the natural landscape and in historical settings, involving users’ visual and physical experience.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the Trigon Biennial in Graz in 1969, she has been the subject of critical essays by Accame, Bandini, Biffi Gentili, Caramel, Carpentieri, De Bartolomeis, Dehò, Fossati, Lamberti, Mahlow, Mengden, Monti, Rosci and Veca, of the books Laura Castagno, Luoghi partiture stanze (Eidos 1996) and Lavori degli anni  60 (Eidos 2006) and of original music dedicated to her by E. Zaffiri and E. Correggia. Her exhibitions include Constructive Art Nürnberg-Oslo 1969, Löhr Gallery, Frankfurt 1984, Macerata Painting Gallery 1989, Avantgarde Gallery, Berlin 1991; Stat Grodzka Gallery, Lublin 1993; Red Room, Turin 1995; The Venice Biennale, 1995; University of East Anglia, Norwich 1996; Society for Art and Design, Bonn 1997; Arte Sella 1998; Material Concept Construct, Steyr, Salzburg and Erfurt, 1998; Atelier 340, Brussels 2000;  Sculpture Biennale, La Mandria 2002; Poletti Library, Modena 2005; Venetian Villas of Mira and Stra 2005; MIAAO Museum, Turin 2007; Algorithmic Revolution, ZKM Karlsruhe 2007; The Forms of Air, Fabriano 2007.