Juan Carlos Castagnino ( Mar del Plata , November 18, 1908 – Buenos Aires , April 21, 1972 ) was an Argentine painter, landscape architect and architect. He cultivated mural painting, mosaic and ceramics . Of his production, it is worth highlighting The Man from the River and the series Martín Fierro .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical summary
- 1 Career path
- 2 Vida Artistica
- 3 Muerte
- 4Premios
- 2 Sources
biographical synthesis
He was born in a hotel room on the even side of Avenida Luro, between España and Veinte de Septiembre, in the city of Mar del Plata (on the Atlantic coast, 400 km south of the city of Buenos Aires).
Until 1914 he lived on the land of Camet, where his father had set up a blacksmith shop. He grew up in a scenario where the synthesis of the rural landscape paraded; wagons, horses, and country monthly followed one another like an endless tape, with their customs, colors, and problems.
Career path
He completed high school in just three years, studying and taking free exams at the Colegio Nacional Mariano Moreno . In the summers he worked at the Mar del Plata branch of Casa Witcomb, the oldest exhibition house on Florida Street in Buenos Aires, and the source of photographic documentation for Argentina in the last third of the 19th century.
In 1928, he entered the Faculty of Exact Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires to pursue architecture, at the same time he did so in the sketch workshop of the Mutualidad de Bellas Artes and later at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes .
Vida Artistica
In 1938 he was one of the assistants of the famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros . Later he was one of the painters of the team of muralists made up of Lino Enea Spilimbergo , Antonio Berni , Manuel Colmeiro and Demetrio Urruchúa , who painted the dome of the Pacific Gallery, the first mural work carried out in a public place in the Argentine capital.
In 1939 he undertook his first trip to Europe. He attends André Lothe ‘s workshop in Paris .
In 1942 he travels through Italy , Spain and France .
In 1953 he traveled to the East. He was in People’s China , Mongolia , and left his testimony of those countries in numerous watercolours, chalks and notes. He attends invited in 1958 to the International Fair of Brussels .
In 1960 he travels through Mexico and through Central American countries. After the trip through America he begins to work with acrylic.
In 1962, Castagnino made for EUDEBA (University Publishing House of Buenos Aires), a series of illustrations for the poem Martín Fierro (by José Hernández ). He managed to give a defined face to the most popular of the characters in Argentine literature and was the editorial event of the year.
From 1964 to 1966 he settled in Rome and toured almost all of Europe. He frequented the old art galleries of Western art and attended the workshop of André Lothe .
In 1969 he is invited to exhibit in the Soviet Union , Poland and Germany .
Death
He died in Buenos Aires on April 21, 1972. In his last stage, two aspects seem to insinuate themselves in artistic production, on the one hand, the works in which he develops a total artistic search and, on the other, those in which an intention prevails. political and committed. But his works cannot be reduced to a political denunciation, we must differentiate the militant and committed aspect of the concrete man, from the creative personality and his searches. Among his works of a mural nature, the following stand out: the Workers and Peasants fresco , the Offering of the New Earth , the ceilings of the Pacific Gallery (in the center of Buenos Aires), in collaboration with Lino Spilimbergo , Antonio Berni, Demetrio Urruchúa and Manuel Colmerio , the mural In Praise of the Uruguay River , the Mural at the Dawn of the City , Man, Space and Hope , the Sun and Moon panel , to name a few of his magnificent achievements.
prizes
He obtained prizes in provincial and national halls, abroad he obtained the Medal of Honor in painting, International Fair of Brussels; the Special Prize for Drawing II, Biennial of Mexico, the Honor Award, Saigon International Salon .
In Paris he attends the workshops of great painters such as Georges Braque , Pablo Picasso , Fernand Leger and André Lothe and in Italy those of Carlo Carrá and Mario Sironi . He obtained the most important national awards, such as the Grand Prize of Honor at the National Hall in 1961 with his work “Quemazón”.
Also international awards such as the Medal of Honor in Brussels 1958, Special Prize in Drawing at the II Biennial of Mexico 1962. We are facing one of the most important plastic artists in Argentina. [[In 1962 he illustrated for Editorial EUDEBA the most widespread of the editions of “Martín Fierro”. Within the first year, and after several editions, nearly 250,000 copies were sold. For the generation of Argentines who had these editions in their hands, the gaucho drawn by Castagnino “was” Martín Fierro. The work on display is the original drawing of that image.
He made multiple personal exhibitions in galleries in the Argentine Republic, has participated in the Palanza contest organized by the Academy of Fine Arts and in One Hundred and Fifty Years of Argentine Painting, organized by the National Museum of Fine Arts.
Abroad, he participated in collective exhibitions in Paris , Washington , Lima , Warsaw , San Francisco , Melbourne and Tokyo , Porto Alegre , Mexico, Rome and Brasilia , among others; and in individual exhibitions in Ecuador , Lima , Prague , Mexico, Warsaw and Montevideo, among others.
He was called “social painter”, meaning he is an artist who used painting to denounce situations of injustice.
Member of number in the National Academy of Fine Arts; he made drawings on topics of the iron and steel industry for DALMINE SA In 1968, the Editorial Center of Latin America SA published his didactic book The Watercolor.
The Mar del Plata Art Museum has been named after him since 1982, as a tribute to this master of Argentine plastic arts.