Federico Castellón

Federico Castellón was a talented painter, printmaker, and illustrator whose early works are among the most evocative American Surrealist paintings of their time. Born to a large family in Almeria, Spain in 1914, Castellón discovered his talent for sketching at an early age. The family moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1921, where they were among the few Spanish speaking people in the neighborhood. Castellón often felt ostracized by his peers and embraced drawing and sketching as a means of self expression. Although he credited his skills to his supportive teachers, Castellón was largely self-taught. He frequently visited New York museums to study old master paintings, and initially worked in a similar realist style. His teachers and exposure to the New York art scene broadened his interests to include modernism. Castellón’s precocious talent was both recognized and rewarded by his teachers at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. At eighteen, he painted a large mural for his school that chronicled the development of modern art.

In the early 1930s, Castellón met Mexican muralist Diego Rivera at a lecture series while he was in New York completing the Rockefeller Center murals. Castellón shared his work with Rivera, who brought it to the director of Weyhe Gallery in New York. Castellón received his first solo exhibition there in 1933 when he was just eighteen years old. Rivera also helped Castellón secure a traveling fellowship from the Spanish government to study art. For the next four years, he visited Spain, France, and England, spending most of his time in Paris. His experience in Europe bolstered his reputation, and upon return to the United States in 1937 he frequently exhibited his works at the Weyhe Gallery, annual exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

During his fellowship abroad, Castellón encountered the work of European Surrealists and modernists and his early paintings show the influence of René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, and even Picasso and Paul Klee. Like other Surrealists, he was interested in psychology, and voraciously read the works of Freud and his disciples, and also studied the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe. Castellón’s bizarre imagery and dream-like landscapes were among the earliest American surrealist works, even before the style was introduced to wider audiences in 1936 at the landmark exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art.

The present work, Heavenly Kiss was painted in 1939 while the artist was participating at Yaddo, an artist residency and retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. The painting depicts an enormous nude woman set against a meticulously detailed landscape that evokes a Renaissance masterwork. With closed eyes and pursed lips, the woman kisses a large heavenly figure in the clouds. Her caricature-like hand dominates the foreground of the painting and holds up another nude figure balancing on stilts or wires like a puppet master. The voluminous white cloth and scattered architectural ruins reinforces Castellón’s classical artistic influences and showcases his excellency as a draftsman. For nearly a half century, Heavenly Kiss was in the personal collection of Chaim and Renee Gross. The American sculptor and close friend of Castellón acquired some of the artist’s best work.

Castellón continued to travel during the 1940s and 1950s, receiving two Guggenheim Fellowships, visiting Asia with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and South America working for the Department of State. Castellón was a prolific artist throughout his career, producing a large number of drawings, prints, and lithographs. His oil paintings, however, are more rare. He supplemented his career by illustrating for books and magazines, and teaching at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, New School for Social Research and Queens College. Castellón’s works are in numerous museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.