Jorge Castillo

JORGE CASTILLO CASALDERREY (Pontevedra, 1933).
Untitled.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 160 x 130 cm; 165 x 135 cm (frame).

Since he was a child, Jorge Castillo is passionate about drawing, and with only ten years old he makes, with crayons, his first copy of Rubens. According to Castillo, Rubens' painting taught him to understand the cubism of Braque and Picasso. His family emigrated to Buenos Aires the year the painter was born, but he returned to Europe in 1955. He tries to go to Paris, but due to lack of economic resources he settles in Spain. After passing through Vigo he settles in Madrid in 1955, where he soon comes into contact with the art critic José María Moreno Galván, who admires his work and introduces him to Madrid's artistic circles. In 1958 he begins to sell his drawings at the Biosca gallery, and the painter Antonio Saura himself buys several of them. The following year he exhibits his works on paper and watercolors at the Altamira gallery in Madrid. Little by little he will gradually opt for the technique of engraving, which will finally be his main means of expression, although he will alternate it with painting. In 1960 he is selected for the Biennial of São Paulo in Brazil. From then on he exhibited his work internationally, in galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, Lisbon, Turin, Hanover, Dusseldorf and Geneva. He participated 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 dedicated to a specific period of his career. He won awards such as the International Drawing (1964) and Painting (1975) in Darmstadt, the City of 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.