Jorge Castillo

JORGE CASTILLO CASALDERREY (Pontevedra, 1933).
"Grand Olga", Berlin, 1974.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 150 x 150 cm.
Restlessness and elegance harmonise in Jorge Castillo's compositions, and in Grand Olga this is expressed in a singular way: the irrepressible oneiric impulse is finally tamed by the enveloping stroke, by the exquisiteness of the form. The indomitable unconscious is subjugated by a refined poetics. The secret, however, always triumphs, so that the stylised figuration does not reveal the mysteries of the mind. Castillo always remains intimate and unsettling, whether he deals with surreal subject matter or a familiar universe of still lifes and New York landscapes.
Jorge Castillo has had a passion for drawing since he was a child, and at the age of ten he made his first copy of Rubens with coloured pencils. According to Castillo, Rubens' painting taught him to understand the cubism of Braque and Picasso. His family emigrated to Buenos Aires the year after the painter was born, but he returned to Europe in 1955. He tried to go to Paris, but due to lack of financial resources he settled in Spain. After passing through Vigo he settled in Madrid in 1955, where he soon came into contact with the art critic José María Moreno Galván, who admired his work and introduced him to Madrid's artistic circles. In 1958 he began to sell his drawings at the Biosca gallery, and the painter Antonio Saura himself bought several of them. The following year he exhibited his works on paper and watercolours at the Altamira gallery in Madrid. Little by little he began to opt for the technique of engraving, which would finally become his main means of expression, although he alternated it with painting. In 1960 he was selected for the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil. From then on he exhibited his work internationally, in galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, Lisbon, Turin, Hanover, Düsseldorf and Geneva. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1964 and 1976, and in 1970 he held a solo exhibition at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the first major museum exhibition devoted to a specific period of his career. He won prizes such as the International Drawing (1964) and Painting (1975) in Darmstadt, the Ciudad de Pontevedra (1994), and the Cultura Viva de las Artes Plásticas (2006). He currently lives and works in Soho, New York. Jorge Castillo's work can be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, the Juan March Foundation, the National Galleries of Edinburgh and Berlin, the San Francisco and Vitoria Museums of Modern Art, the Kunsthalle in Bremen, the Albertina in Vienna, the National Library of Spain and the Guggenheim in New York, among others.