Biography
Vicente Castellano
An integral painter, in the words of Juan Manuel Bonet, Vicente Castellano (Valencia, 1927-2014), traveled to Paris in the mid-fifties, a city where he would remain for two decades. In his Colegio de España, which would be so fruitful for our creators, he lived for a couple of years. That city, as for so many artists of those years -Chillida, Palazuelo, Sempere or Lucio Muñoz-, was in his words “an extraordinary discovery”. Sempere would then be his great companion, an extraordinary tutelary shadow -in his words- who would initiate him into the mystery artist, Paul Klee. A participant in one of the first attempts at artistic renewal in Valencia, the group called “Los Siete” (1950-1954), and a member of the “Parpalló” collective (1956-1961) from the beginning, Léon-Louis Sosset would refer to that time the "strange refinement of materials (...) and the lively balance of colors and shapes" comparing his work with Schwitters. He was a student at the Parisian School of Fine Arts with the painter Edouard Goerg.
A student of space, textures and shapes that had already impressed some cubist painters, his "recovery" as an artist, so linked to international currents, but far from the noise of informal art, had to do in our time with his Valencian galleries, first Muro and then Rosalía Sender and with the defense of his work by Bonet's IVAM.
A recent retrospective on his work, held in 2010, finally allowed many to learn about his creation where, together with that spatial reflection, there was a very objectual sculptural world, motley "reliquaries" in his words, seems crossed between Nevelson and Rueda.
A most refined artist, a painter fascinated by the elusive miracle of simplicity, -in the words of his fellow artistic adventurer Vicente Aguilera Cerni-, his creative career has been extremely singular and heir to that statement by Herbert Read: the artist is always a stranger.
Like his admired Parisian Juan Gris, Castellano would become a painter from another time, seeming to have given priority to his inner voice. Some interpreted his painting as permeated by an indefinable melancholy accompanying the slow rhythm of his forms and structures, the delicate superimposition of color planes, the sobriety of his monochrome reliefs, the disciplined storm that bathes his collages of materials. Castellano is an artist to whom that maxim recalled by Jean Cassou could be applied: he was a being endowed with a rare character of perfection and purity.
Castellano was a defender from the beginning, also in writing, of the transcendence of art, of understanding it as a factor of emotional enrichment, art as a prosecutor of plenitude. Thus, it is not surprising that Castellano declared that "the artist makes a subjective interpretation of his reality, and in my case he has been spiritual and profound, inviting the viewer to participate in it." Well, shapes and lines, materials and planes, colors and non-colors, were raised by Castellano in the difficult and elusive sphere of space in search, it seems, of an elusive higher life. The desire to proclaim the search for an intelligent beauty was a courageous decision for this artist because it was also a sign of evidence, exposure to risk, art made completely uncovered daring to show what was, ultimately, the supreme exercise of creativity. faith in the craft of creating.
“He is fascinated by the elusive miracle of simplicity”, we reiterate, Aguilera Cerni would write in the 1950s upon discovering his work. A delicate and upright artist, I think that Castellano subscribed throughout his work, like few privileged people of our time, the maxim of the protagonist of Balzac's "The Unknown Masterpiece": "You have to have faith, faith in art (...) to create something like that"
Castellano Giner, Vicente. Valencia, 1927 – 2.XII.2014. Painter.
Trained at the School of Arts and Crafts and School of Fine Arts of Valencia. In 1951 he extended his studies in Madrid and Segovia, pensioned by the Provincial Council of Valencia. In July 1955 he went to Paris on a pension from the same Diputación, studying at the School of Fine Arts in that city, under the direction of Professor Goerg. As of 1957 he establishes his residence in Paris, integrating himself into its cultural and artistic environment. In 1977 he moved back to Valencia, where he fixed his residence until today. Since 1981 he has been a professor of Color Concept and Technique at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Polytechnic University of Valencia until his retirement.
He has been a founding member of the Los Siete group, of the Parpalló group and collaborated in the activities of the Mediterranean Artistic Movement.
Until 1955, Castellano made a figurative painting of brown and red colors, influenced by Daniel Vázquez Díaz and José Gutiérrez Solana. He also did, during his pre-abstract stage, work with a neo-cubist tendency. However, his first stay in Paris that same year opened the doors of abstraction to him, which, except for short periods, he has not abandoned until today. Upon his arrival in Paris, he lives with Eusebio Sempere, who introduces him to the artistic avant-garde of the moment. The first abstraction is of a geometric nature, influenced by the suprematism of Kasimir Malevich. It comes after a neocubist period in which contacts with figuration are being lost. The compositions of this period seek to order space in rectangular structures, on uniform chromatic backgrounds, in fairly flat shades of grey, brown, white, yellow, violet, lilac and ochre. His language would be extended, at the end of the fifties, to other more circular forms reminiscent of the celestial world or other structures and to new techniques such as collage.
In 1962 he gives way to a stage inspired by the Nouveau Réalisme, where a whole series of material elements that are despised by the consumer society are revalued. With this he seeks to criticize that same society, confronting it with its own detrital materials. These elements are decontextualized from their usual environment and endowed with a semantic load different from the one they had within the welfare society that has produced them.
The French May of 1968 caused him to reflect on the foundations of the Western world and this leads him to evoke some of the myths of classical culture with a language rooted in matter. Castellano recreates in his works the themes of Icarus, Bacchus, Venus, Sino, Hypnos, Medusa, etc., and through them he tries to express ideas such as those of fall, life, death, nature, culture, chaos, logos, etc. The compositions simulate cosmic spaces in which the material forms that embody classical myths float. The colors evoke the outer world with whites and shades of gray. Later will come a series dedicated to illustrating poems by Federico García Lorca in this same material frame of mind.
Over the years, Castellano has been achieving a successful synthesis between the world of geometry and material informalism, set in very different semiotic contexts, such as emigration, ecology, etc. His works flee from a cold geometry to introduce us to a universe of tactile sensations, where the work of the burlap and the material treatments of the surfaces evoke a whole series of subjective nuances that determine his personal poetics.
Works by ~: Composition with White Form, 1956; Structures, white form, 1957; Composition with White Form, 1958; Icarus, 1968; Arid Blue, 1976; Exodus, 1982; The city, 1990; Rectangle and two circles, 1990; Petra, 1994; Memories, 1997.
Bibl.: P. Patuel Chust, “El Grupo Parpalló (1956-1961)”, in Valencian Art Archive (Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos, Valencia), LXXI (1990), pp. 162-171; G. Xuriguera, Vicente Castellano, Madrid, Fernán-Gómez, 1990; M.ª L. Borras, Vicente Castellano. From the “Parpalló” group to the present. A look at his workshop, Almansa, Popular University, 1991; P. Ramírez (curator), Grupo Parpalló (1956-1961), Valencia, Palau dels Scala-Sala Parpalló, 1991; A. Segarra, M.ª L. Borras, J. B. Peiró and G. Xuriguera, Vicente Castellano. Exoduses, Mislata, City Council, 1992; VV. AA., A century of Valencian painting. Intuitions and proposals, Valencia, IVAM, 1994; P. Patuel Chust, Material Informalism in Valencian Painting, Castellón, Provincial Council, 1997; The Moviment Artístic del Mediterrani (1956-1961), Valencia, Generalitat Valenciana, Consell Valencià de Cultura, 1998; E. Guigon, Vicente Castellano. Work of Paris, 1962-1965, Valencia, Muro Gallery, 1998; P. Patuel Chust and R. Prats Rivelles (curators) et al., Valencian Geometry. The imprint of Constructivism, Valencia, Provincial Council, 1999; J. Á, Blasco Carrascosa, Vicente Castellano. Paints. Anthological exhibition, Valencia, Chirive Foundation lla Soriano of the Valencian Community, 2010; R. de la Calle, The donation of some works by Vicente Castellano to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos, Valencia, Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos, 2010.