Jorge Castillo

JORGE CASTILLO CASALDERREY (Pontevedra, 1933).
"Celebration", c. 1989.
Acrylic on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 80 x 100 cm.
In this painting Jorge Castillo shows himself close to the primitivism and spirituality of German expressionism, with correspondences to Max Beckmann, with his arcane melancholy and elements carved with rough and expressive strokes. These creations feature the characteristic fragments of objects or figures that are repeated over and over again throughout his career, which he arranges in compositions with indefinite backgrounds on which they seem to float.
The son of Spanish emigrants in Argentina, Jorge Castillo returned to Spain in 1957. He was introduced in the artistic circles of Madrid, and in 1958 he began to sell his drawings in the Biosca gallery. Little by little, he began to opt for the technique of engraving, which eventually became his main means of expression, although he alternated it with painting. In 1960 he was selected for the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. From then on he exhibited internationally, in galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, Lisbon, Turin, Hanover, Düsseldorf 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 show dedicated to a specific period of his career. He won awards such as the Darmstadt International Drawing and Painting Prize, the City of Pontevedra and the Cultura Viva de las Artes Plásticas. He is represented in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lausanne, the Juan March Foundation, the National Galleries of Edinburgh and Berlin, the Museums of Modern Art of San Francisco and Vitoria, the Kunsthalle of Bremen, the Albertina of Vienna, the National Library of Spain and the Guggenheim of New York, among others.