Sergio de Castro (15 September 1922 – 31 December 2012) was an Argentinian artist.
Biography
Sergio de Castro was born in
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...
, in an aristocratic family of Spanish origins (
Galicia
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
House of Castro
The House of Castro is an Iberian noble lineage present in the since the Middle Ages in the kingdoms of Castile, Galicia, and Portugal. Though its exact origins are disputed, the House of Castro became one of the most powerful families of the S ...
. His father was a diplomat, which is why, from 1923 until 1932, Castro lived in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
with his parents and his two sisters. During these years he visited cities like
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
.
In 1933 he entered a Jesuit school in
Montevideo
Montevideo () is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . Montevideo is situated on the southern co ...
and he started studying music. He discovered poetry by learning to speak and write in Spanish. He was specially touched by the works of
César Vallejo
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (March 16, 1892 – April 15, 1938) was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only two books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators ...
. Through the years Castro would become close friends with writers like
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and ...
,
Julio Cortázar
Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ...
,
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and Tragicomedy, tr ...
Georges Schehadé Georges may refer to:
Places
*Georges River, New South Wales, Australia
*Georges Quay (Dublin)
*Georges Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania
Other uses
*Georges (name)
* ''Georges'' (novel), a novel by Alexandre Dumas
* "Georges" (song), a 1977 ...
. Later, during a trip to Uruguay, he met
Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín or Joaquin is a male given name, the Spanish version of Joachim.
Given name
* Joaquín (footballer, born 1956), Spanish football midfielder
* Joaquín (footballer, born 1981), Spanish football winger
* Joaquín (footballer, born 1982 ...
, with whom he studied painting and monumental art from 1941 until 1949. In 1942 he moved to Argentina, where he would live until 1949. Castro was also friends with other artists like
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas (; February 26, 1906 – September 3, 1994), also known as Niko Ghika, was a leading Greek painter, sculptor, engraver, writer and academic. He was a founding member of the Association of Greek Art Critics, AICA-Hellas, ...
,
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (13 June 1908 – 6 March 1992) was a Portuguese abstract painter. She was considered a leading member of the European abstract expressionism movement known as Art Informel. Her works feature complex interiors and ...
and
Árpád Szenes
Árpád Szenes (also french: Árpád Szenès; 6 May 1897, Budapest – 16 January 1985, Paris) was a Hungarian-Jewish abstract painter who worked in France.Córdoba, where we also worked as the assistant to the musician
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first ...
in
Alta Gracia
Alta Gracia is a city located in the north-centre of the province of Córdoba, Argentina. Its name means "High Grace". It is built upon the ''Sierras Chicas'', in a region that the Comechingón Indians used to call ''Paravachasca''. It has abou ...
, until his death in 1946. In 1945 and 1946 he had a grant from the French government to study musical composition. During the year of 1946 he had an exhibition in New York City among other members of Torres García's workshop. That same year he travelled to the northeast of Argentina and the south of Perú to study
pre-Columbian art
Pre-Columbian art refers to the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas from at least 13,000 BCE to the European conquests starting in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era c ...
with
Gonzalo Fonseca
Gonzalo Fonseca (2 July 1922 – 11 June 1997) was a Uruguayan artist known for his stone sculpting. He originally studied to be an architect at the University of Montevideo, but discovered modern art in 1942 after working in the Taller Torres- ...
,
Julio Uruguay Alpuy Julio is the Spanish equivalent of the month July and may refer to:
*Julio (given name)
*Julio (surname)
*Júlio de Castilhos, a municipality of the western part of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
* ''Julio'' (album), a 1983 compilation albu ...
and
Jonio Montiel
Jonio is an underground station on Line B of the Rome Metro. It is located in the Monte Sacro quarter, under the intersection between Viale Jonio and Via Scarpanto
Karpathos ( el, Κάρπαθος, ), also Carpathos, is the second largest of t ...
.
In 1949 he started teaching History of Music in the new music school of the city of
La Plata
La Plata () is the capital city of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. According to the , it has a population of 654,324 and its metropolitan area, the Greater La Plata, has 787,294 inhabitants. It is located 9 kilometers (6 miles) inland from th ...
. His work as a musician drew attention from relevant figures such as
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler ( , , ; 25 January 188630 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major ...
,
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
and
Juan José Castro
Juan José Castro (March 7, 1895September 3, 1968) was an Argentine composer and conductor.
Born in Avellaneda, Castro studied piano and violin under Manuel Posadas and composition under Eduardo Fornarini, in Buenos Aires. In the 1920s he was ...
. He quit this job when he got a grant from the French government to improve his musical studies in Paris, where he settled in November 1949. Since 1951 he devoted himself exclusively to painting.
In 1955, his friend the German writer and translator
Edith Aron
Edith is a feminine given name derived from the Old English words ēad, meaning 'riches or blessed', and is in common usage in this form in English, German, many Scandinavian languages and Dutch. Its French form is Édith. Contractions and var ...
introduced him to Julio Cortázar, who would become a close friend of him. Castro inspired the character of Etienne in Cortázar's novel ''Rayuela'' ( ''Hopscotch''). In the book is featured the intimate friendship of the protagonist, Horacio Oliveira, with his companion in the Serpent Club, whom he often visited in his studio in Paris. In 1960 he won the Hallmark Prize in New York. In 1979 he obtained French nationality.
In 1980 he showed his works at the Argentinian pavilion in the 39th
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
. He was associate professor in the Human Sciences Faculty of the
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers.
The French university traces its history to the ea ...
from 1981 until 1986. In 1997 he became Officer in the
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...
.
In 2006, Sergio de Castro made a 220-work donation to the Fine Arts Museum of Saint-Lô.
He was also a close friend of the musician
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (; April 11, 1916June 25, 1983) was an Argentinian composer of classical music. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas.
Biography
Ginastera was born in Buenos ...
, who made reference to Sergio de Castro and his first works in his notes on modern Argentinian music.
Castro died on 31 December 2012 in Paris. He is buried in the
Montparnasse cemetery
Montparnasse Cemetery (french: link=no, Cimetière du Montparnasse) is a cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, in the city's 14th arrondissement. The cemetery is roughly 47 acres and is the second largest cemetery in Paris. The cemetery ...
, in Paris, close to his dear friend Samuel Beckett.
Monumental works
* Two wall paintings for the Martirené Pavilion of the Hospital Saint-Bois (1942), in Montevideo (Uruguay), in collaboration with Joaquín Torres García and his disciples, among which Castro was the youngest.
* ''The Creation of the Universe'' (1956–1958), 6m x 20m stained-glass window. Castro worked with painter and glass-maker J. J. K. Ray (1898–1979) in Paris. This window is the church of the Monastery of the Benedictines in Couvrechef- La Folie (
Caen
Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,Jean Zunz.
* ''Redemption'' (1968–1969), 4,5 x 17m stained-glass window for Lutheran temple
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...
Kirche in Hamburg-Dulsberg (Germany). Architect: Gerhart Laage.
* ''The Prophets'' (1978–1981), five stained glasses for pre-existent windows in the 15th-century Collegiate of Romont (
Fribourg
, neighboring_municipalities= Düdingen, Givisiez, Granges-Paccot, Marly, Pierrafortscha, Sankt Ursen, Tafers, Villars-sur-Glâne
, twintowns = Rueil-Malmaison (France)
, website = www.ville-fribourg.ch
, Location of , Location of ()
() ...
),
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
.
* Wall painting for Yonne public library, in
Saint-Georges-sur-Baulche
Saint-Georges-sur-Baulche () is a commune in the Yonne department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in north-central France. It is twinned with the affluent English village of Little Aston.
See also
*Communes of the Yonne department
The following ...
, in
Auxerre
Auxerre ( , ) is the capital of the Yonne department and the fourth-largest city in Burgundy. Auxerre's population today is about 35,000; the urban area (''aire d'attraction'') comprises roughly 113,000 inhabitants. Residents of Auxerre are r ...
(France).
* Wall paintings on the subject of chemistry (numbers and letters) for the company Atochem in Paris
La Défense
La Défense () is a major business district in France, located west of the city limits of Paris. It is part of the Paris metropolitan area in the Île-de-France region, located in the department of Hauts-de-Seine in the communes of Courbev ...
, now renamed Arkema.
File:Sergio de Castro, Verrière de la Création du Monde, 1956-59.jpg, The Creation of the Universe, Monastery of the Benedictines, Couvrechef-La Folie, Caen, 1956–59.
File:Sergio de Castro, 7e jour de la Création, Le Repos Divin, 1956-59.jpg, The 7th Day of Creation from the Couvrechef window.
File:Sergio de Castro, vitrail de Moïse, le Buisson Ardent.jpg, The Burning Bush, Moses window. Collegiate of Romont, Switzerland, 1980. Photo by Dominique Souse.
File:Sergio de Castro, vitrail de Jonas.jpg, Jonas window (detail). Collegiate of Romont, Switzerland, 1980. Photo by Dominique Souse.
File:Sergio de Castro, vitrail de l'arbre de Jessé.jpg, Tree of Jesse, Isaiah window (detail). Collegiate of Romont, Switzerland, 1980. Photo by Dominique Souse.
File:Sergio de Castro, vitrail du char d'Elie.jpg, Elias window (detail). Collegiate of Romont, Switzerland, 1980. Photo by Dominique Souse.
Selected exhibitions
* 1952 Galerie Jeanne Castel Paris
* 1954 Galería Bonino Buenos Aires and Galerie
Pierre Loeb
Pierre Loeb (born September 24, 1897, in Paris; died May 4, 1964) was a French art dealer and gallery owner who focused primarily on Surrealism and 20th-century Modernism. In 1924 he founded the Galerie Pierre in Paris, whose most famous exhibition ...
, Paris
* 1956 Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris
* 1958 Matthiesen Gallery, London
* 1959 documenta 2 ''Kunst nach 1945''
Kassel
Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...
Bergamo
Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Com ...
and
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...
Kunstverein Hamburg Kunstverein may refer to:
Germany
* , an art association, founded in 1986 in Aachen
* Kunstverein Arnsberg, an association for contemporary art in Arnsberg
* , an art association in Karlsruhe
* , an art society which operates the Kunsthalle Bremen ...
''Retrospektive''
* 1966 Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland (retrospective)
* 1966 Recklinhausen, ''Variationen über ein Thema'', Städtische Kunsthalle
* 1970 ''Retrospektiven'' in
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
, Kunstforering, and Kunst Industriemuseet,
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...
, Kunstforening,
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
, Kunstforening,
Holstebro
Holstebro is the main town in Holstebro Municipality, Denmark. The town, bisected by ''Storåen'' ("The Large Creek") and has a population of 36,489 (1 January 2022).Kunsthalle Bremen
The Kunsthalle Bremen is an art museum in Bremen, Germany. It is located close to the Bremen Old Town on the "Culture Mile" (german: Kulturmeile). The Kunsthalle was built in 1849, enlarged in 1902 by architect Eduard Gildemeister, and expanded ...
, ''Retrospektive'',
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
Tempelhof, Kunstamt (Berlin Festival)
* 1975–76 Retrospective exhibition the
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen is a fine arts museum in the French city of Caen, founded at the start of the 19th century and rebuilt in 1971 within the ducal château.
History
Opening
On September 1, 1801, the Minister of Interior Jean-A ...
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
* 1987 French Institute London. Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
* 1988 Galerie des Ambassades y Galerie Galarte, Sergio de Castro, ''Natures Mortes'', 1958–1965. Paris/ Bayeux, Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art
* 1989 Galerie des Ambassades, Paris
* 1991–92 Romont, Swiss Stained Glass Museum (Castro Donation)
* 1995 Paris, Galarté Gallery
* 1997 Paris La Défense, Atochem
* 1998 Punta De Este, Sur Gallery, Punta del Este, Uruguay
* 2006–07 Saint-Lô, Normandy, exhibition of the Castro Donation
* 2008 Château de Gruyères, Switzerland, Sergio de Castro
* 2009 Museo Gurvich Montevideo, Uruguay, Francine Del Pierre and Fance Franck's Workshop, Paris
Bibliography
* Denys Sutton, ''Sergio de Castro'', Le Musée de Poche, Paris, 1963.
* Jacques Thuillier, ''Les Prophètes'', Madrid, Ediciones El Viso, 1984.
* (es) Jacques Thuillier, ''Los Profetas'', Madrid, Ediciones El Viso, 1984.
* Étienne Chatton, ''Nouveaux signes du sacré : Le vitrail contemporain'', Lausanne, Fribourg, Coédition Loisirs et Pédagogie, Fragnière, 1985.
* (es) Marie-Pierre Colle-Corcuera, ''Artistas latinoamericanos en su estudio'', México, Noriega Editores, 1994.
* Jacques Thuillier, ''Sergio de Castro : 60 ans de création'', 1944–2004, Paris, Somogy, 2006.
* Véronique David, Castro et le défi du vitrail ", dans ''In Situ, revue des patrimoines'', 2009, no 123.