Nosotros mas la mitad de nosotros (Us Plus Half of Us)

Born in Mexico City and later a resident of Madrid, Castañeda produced meticulous paintings, often with a sense of humor. As a university student, he met the German émigré artist Mathias Goeritz, who inspired him to see “the poetic, the philosophical, the spatial, and the magical.” A contemporary of Surrealists, among them Leonora Carrington and Wolfgang Paalen, Castañeda explored the aesthetics of the unusual and fantastic. His work recalls the Flemish-style painting of Antonio Ruiz as well as the European influence that seeped into Mexican culture in the 1940s, during the boom of suprarealism: surrealist themes in realistic forms. Stylistically, the genre of portraiture has a significant, historical presence in Mexican art. Here through the incorporation of portraiture and surrealism, Castañeda infused allegory into his work. This image of one man in various dimensions with a unified pair of open palms carries an air of iconoclasm, as if religion unifies the multi-dimensional person.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and by Anna Maydanik