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Federico Castellon (1914-1971)


1 of 5
Untitled, 1933 oil on illustration board 10 x 14 i...
Untitled, 1933
oil on illustration board
10 x 14 inches / 25.4 x 35.6 cm
signed and dated
The Proposal, 1935 dry brush on paper 11 7/8 x 16...
The Proposal, 1935
dry brush on paper
11 7/8 x 16 inches / 30.2 x 40.6 cm
signed and dated
Greeting Visitors after a Long Journey, 1936 dry b...
Greeting Visitors after a Long Journey, 1936
dry brush on paper
11 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches / 30.2 x 40.3 cm
signed and dated
Untitled, 1939 ink on paper 6 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches /...

Untitled, 1939
ink on paper
6 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches / 15.9 x 21.6 cm
signed and dated

Study for a Scarf, c.1945 ink and watercolor on pa...

Study for a Scarf, c.1945
ink and watercolor on paper mounted on paper
36 x 35 3/4 inches / 91.4 x 90.8 cm


 


Exhibitions


Prints & Publications


Artist Information

“Aesthetics is a very important part of the whole thing because, as I say, it is the language but it is also part of the means…I think aesthetics are something that absorb me only in the sense that I have to have the thing visually exciting to me, besides having it do something for me beyond the visual effect. In other words, the visual thing will attract me to it enormously and yet something will pull me into it, which is the thing itself. I am very strongly for form and matter, the combination of both.”[1]

Born in Alhabia, a city in Almería, Spain, to a family of seven children, Federico Castellon lived in Barcelona until 1921, when his parents moved the family to Flatbush, Brooklyn. Speaking little English, Castellon encountered difficulties when attempting to adapt to his new setting; he was often the subject of ridicule among his classmates due to his status as a foreigner, and his struggle to learn English resulted in him being held back in school for two years. Castellon turned to drawing as a coping mechanism, becoming consumed by the creative process for hours at a time. As a teenager he often visited museums in the city to observe the works of European Old Masters; he was not exposed to modern art until his art teacher at Erasmus Hall High School, who strongly encouraged his drawing practice, introduced him to the works of Cézanne and Picasso. Shortly after graduating, he completed a mural for the school that drew enough critical attention that it was exhibited in New York at Raymond and Raymond Galleries before being permanently installed in the school.

Though the Surrealist movement did not become widely known among American audiences until 1936, when the Museum of Modern Art opened Alfred Barr’s landmark exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism, Castellon had already cultivated a group of mature surrealistic drawings by the time he graduated high school in 1933. These works garnered the attention of Diego Rivera, to whom Castellon was introduced by a mutual friend when they attended a lecture the Mexican muralist gave on his (now destroyed) Man at the Crossroads murals in Rockefeller Center. Rivera took an immediate interest in Castellon’s work, bringing his drawings to the attention of the director of Weyhe Gallery in New York, who subsequently gave Castellon his first solo exhibition in late 1933, when the artist was only eighteen. Rivera was so impressed with Castellon that he also began writing letters to the Spanish Minister of Education on his behalf, persuading the Spanish Republic to award the young artist, who lacked the resources to attend college, a government fellowship to study art in Europe for four years. In 1934, Castellon left New York to study painting and printmaking in Paris and Madrid.

In Europe Castellon befriended many of the avant-gardists who made European cafés lively places for intellectual discussion while pursuing his artistic training. The artist’s return to Spain also caused forgotten memories from his childhood to resurface, an unexpected experience that would have a profound effect on his art. “I think the great moving thing was my revisiting Spain and awakening all sort of strange things that came up,” he recalled, “like finding I had a soul, because these memories became real all of a sudden… And my early days, my Surrealism was mostly, I felt, a kind of poetic mysticism…I always meant it as a kind of poetic mysticism.”[2]  The uncertain relationship between dream, memory, and


[1] Oral history interview with Federico Castellon, 1971 April 7-14, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-federico-castellon-5452 (Accessed September 2021).

[2] Ibid.

 

reality would become a central theme in Castellon’s imagery. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out, bringing an abrupt end to the artist’s studies and prompting an early return to New York. Weyhe Gallery opened Castellon’s second solo exhibition later in 1936, and he began to experiment with lithography and printmaking techniques he had learned in Europe. In both 1937 and 1938, his work was included in the annual survey of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and, in 1939, he was invited to participate in Yaddo, an artist residency and retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. The following year he was awarded the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships that he would receive in his career; the second was awarded in 1950.

Though critics labeled him a surrealist, Castellon initially thought of himself as a romantic; he cultivated a keen interest in poetry, especially that of Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, and William Blake, and stated that his early artistic influences included Rodolphe Bresdin, James Ensor, and Edvard Munch. Castellon remained an avid reader for the rest of his life, expanding his interests to psychology and philosophy. After becoming a US citizen in 1943, he was drafted into the army and eventually sent to China with the OSS. The decade following his military service was also defined by travel; he used the funds from his second Guggenheim fellowship to visit Italy, and in the late 1950s moved his family to Paris and Madrid for a brief period. He also began his teaching career during these years and took on commissions from American periodicals, most notably Life magazine. Though he worked in virtually every media, Castellon remains best known for his graphic works on paper, particularly his masterful body of etchings.

Works by Castellon may be found in museum collection across the US and Europe, including the Ackland Museum of Art, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; British Museum, London; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cincinnati Museum of Art, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene; Joseph Allen Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, WA; La Salle University Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, MA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Portland Art Museum, OR; Princeton University Art Museum, NJ; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; San Diego Museum of Art, CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Syracuse University Art Museum, NY; Tacoma Art Museum, WA; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC represents the Estate of Federico Castellon.

 

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Chazen Museum of Art, University of Madison, WI
The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA
Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY
The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Madison Art Center, Madison, WI
The Menil Collection, Houston, TX
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL
Montclair State College, Montclair, NJ
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art, Utica, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
The National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL
The New York Public Library, New York, NY
The Newark Public Library, Newark, NJ
The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Reina de Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Slater Memorial Museum and Converse Art Gallery, Norwich, CT
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse University Syracuse, NY
Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
World Heritage Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, CT

1934   
Weyhe Gallery, New York, NY; 1936, 1938, 1940, 1941
Raymond and Raymond Gallery, New York, NY
Prado De Almeria, Almeria, Spain
Casa Velasquez, Madrid, Spain

1935 
College D'Espagne, Paris, France

1938-39 
American Federation of the Arts, New York, NY; Chattanooga, TN, University of Nebraska,
Lincoln, NB, Seattle Art Museum, WA, San Francisco Museum, CA, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Mills College, Oakland, CA

1941 
Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA

1946 
Princeton Print Club, Princeton, NJ

1947 
Associated American Artists Gallery, New York, NY; 1950, 1952, 1965, 1966

1950 
The American Embassies in Bombay, India and Paris, France

1952 
Mercerberg Art Gallery, PA

1953 
University of Maine, Orono, ME; 1966

1954-55
State Department, Specialists Division of I.E.S, American Embassies in Argentina, Buenos
Aires, Bolivia, Las Paz, Chile, Santiago, Colombia, Bogota, Paraguay, Asuncion, Uruguay, Montivedeo, Venezuela, Caracas

1958 
Society of Illustrators, New York, NY

1961 
Gallery 10, New Hope, PA

1964 
Philadelphia Print Club, Philadelphia, PA
Dintenfass Gallery, New York, NY
Great Neck Library, Great Neck, NY

1965 
Hudson Guild Gallery, Great Neck, NY

1968 
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY

1968-69 
Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT

1971 
Lunn Gallery, Washington, DC

1972
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY

1976 
Graphics Gallery, Toronto, Ontario; 1977

1988 
Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Queens College, NY
Martin Sumers Gallery, New York, NY

1990 
Davidson Gallery, Seattle, WA

1992 
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

1996 
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

2008 
Federico Castellon, De Almeria a Nueva York, Museo de Almeria, Almeria, Spain
Fear and Folly: The Visionary Prints of Francisco Goya and Federico Castellon, Windgate Gallery, University of Arkansas, North Little Rock, AR

1933 
Weyhe Gallery, New York, NY; 1934, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940

1934 
Uptown Gallery, New York, NY
Raymond and Raymond Gallery, New York, NY

1936 
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

1937 
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; 1940
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; 1938, 1945, 1970

1938
The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; 1940, 1942, 1969
Riksforbundet For Bilande Kunst

1939 
Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA

1941 
Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA;
1947

1942 
Carnegie Institute of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; 1943, 1947

1943 
Alexandria Library, Alexandria, VA

1944 
National Academy of Design, New York, NY; 1945

1946 
Associated American Artists Gallery, New York, NY; 1952, 1965, 1973, 1974

1947 
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; 1949, 1968

1948 
J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

1951 
Cheltenham Township Art Center, Cheltenham, PA

1952 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Mercerburg Art Gallery, PA
Galerie Jungst Der Gegenwart, Salzburg, Austria
Succession Gallery, Vienna, Austria

1953
The Edward Root Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

1954 
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

1956 
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ

1957 
University of Illinois, Chicago, IL

1961 
Gallery 10, New Hope, PA

1964 
Princeton Print Club, Princeton, NJ
Dintenfass Gallery, New York, NY
Pratt Graphic Art Center, New York, NY
Gallery Ten, Woodstock, NY
Visual Arts Gallery, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
World's Fair, New York

1965 
Dorsky Gallery, New York, NY
Galerie Des Peintres Graveurs, Paris, France

1966 
Madison Art Center, Madison, WI
Depauw University Art Center, Chicago, IL

1968 
New York Public Library, New York, NY
Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Rijksakademie Van Beelende Kunsen, Amsterdam, Holland

1969 
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY
Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT

1971 
Lunn Gallery, Washington, DC
Biennale International De L'Estampe Epinal, Paris, France

1972
Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN

1974 
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
American Master Prints III, Associated American Artists, New York, NY

1977
Surrealism and American Art: 1931-1947, Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ

1992
Surrealism Embodied: The Figure in American Art 1933-1953, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

1994 
Counterpoints: American Art 1930-1945, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

1995
Collage: Made in America, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
El Surrealismo En Espana, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (Exhibition traveled to Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany; Kunthalle Vienna, Austria; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Palazzo Forti, Verona, Italy; Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela)

1996 
Exploring the Unknown: Surrealism in American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

1997 
Surrealism and American Art 1932-1949, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL

1998 
The Surrealist Vision: Europe and The Americas, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, FL
Twentieth Century American Drawings, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK; Sunrise Museums,   Charleston, WV; Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, FL; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID

1999 
Drawn Across the Century: Highlights from the Dillard Collection of Art on Paper,
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC

2000 
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery: The First Decade, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Collector’s Show, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

2002
Transitions at Mid-Century, Works on Paper 1945-1955, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2005
Surrealism USA, National Academy Museum, New York, NY; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ

2006
Lines of Discovery, 225 Years of American Drawings, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA; The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

2007
Body Beware: 18 American Artists, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Surrealism:  Dreams on Canvas, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY

2010
Unconscious Unbound:  Surrealism in America, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

2011
Night Scented Stock, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY
Otherworldliness, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2012
Drawing Surrealism, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Real/Surreal: Works in the Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI
INsite/INchelsea: The Inaugural Exhibition, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2013
Fear and Folly: The Visionary Prints of Francisco Goya and Federico Castellon; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI;  Foosaner Art Museum at Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL; TCNJ Art Gallery and Sarnoff Collection, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ
Drawing Surrealism, Los Angeles County Museum of, Art, Los Angeles, CA; Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY

2014
Solitary Soul, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2015
Fields of Dream: The Surrealist Landscape, Di Donna Gallery, New York, NY

2016
Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2017
The Age of Anxiety, American Painting in the 1930’s, Musee de l’Orangerie, Paris, France

2018
Eye to I: Self Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, curated by Brandon Brame Fortune, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

2019
A Fine Line: Sketches, Drawings, and Illustrations from the Collection, The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY
The Whitney’s Collection: Selections from 1900-1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2020
Paper Power, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

 

1934-1938
Traveling Fellowship from Spanish Government

1940
Guggenheim Fellowship

1949 
Member of National Academy of Design
Guggenheim Fellowship

1968 
Member of National Institute of Arts and Letters