BIOGRAPHY
José Castillo was born on November 2, 1955 in Santo-Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
In 1976 he entered the Beaux-Arts of Santo-Domingo. As he was politically engaged and persecuted by the regime, he had to leave the country. He arrived in Paris in December 1978.
He continued his studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1981 to 1985. He attended Jacques Lagrange workshop for painting and Ricardo Licata workshop for mosaic.
He turns to a popular expression close to neo-primitivism, staging all the interweaving of
magic, myths, cultural and religious syncretism in everyday life, especially that of blacks and mulattos that we must not forget. His universe then unfolds on different supports: oil on canvas, pastels, collages in mixed techniques, engravings and also totems, assemblages and installations.
José Castillo participated in the Parisian art shows: Salon des Artistes Français, Salon de Mai, Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Mac 2000 and, invited by André Le Glatin, he joined the group of the Biennale 109 for some years. His works have been exhibited in France, in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, in China, in America and Latin-America.
In the years 2000, José Castillo turned to a new material: potatoes, the symbol of Latin
America: he let them germinate, painted them, then he took pictures of them and followed up their slow evolution. He organized this series into a photo gallery that he called “Las Papas”.
Starting in 2005, José Castillo devoted part of his work to photography and video: he took pictures of popular demonstrations in Paris and he sublimated them by pictorial photography techniques that gave them a sacred character. At the same period, he conceived and organized a series of pictures of ephemeral installations and videos where he revealed his entire imagination.
The imaginary permeating José Castillo work is also his secret poetry. He did not aim at
illustrating popular legends, no more than particular Voodoo myths; he was not a naïve
painter from the Caribbean; with his color palette, he simply showed the world as it is. From these outbursts of colors and patterns emerges a poetry that is both tragic and joyful at the same time, opening up to an energy that is specific to life.
Elza Oppenhein Marie-Annick Seneschal Castillo
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