Self-portrait
Date 1964
Dimensions 22 3/4"x 16"
Category Painting
Medium Oil on Masonite
Genre Self-portrait
Period 20th Century
Collection Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Collection

José Rosa Castellanos

"Self-portrait" (1964)

Description

Biography

Printmaker and painter. He studied mechanical drawing and commercial drawing at Central High School in Santurce. His beginnings in the art world started with painter Rafael Tufiño, who offered free guitar lessons to children and young people at the San José public housing project. He developed his learning in graphic arts with master Tufiño at the Community Education Division, at the Campeche Workshop‑Gallery led by Domingo García in San Juan, and with Lorenzo Homar at the Printmaking Workshop of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. Since 1973, when Homar retired, and until 1986 he became director of that printmaking workshop where he perfected his mastery of the silkscreen media. His work captures humorous images and themes of typical Puerto Rican popular culture, such as life in the bar, dancing, politics and the religiousness of our people. In the seventies he developed a novel approach to his work, characterized by the integration of texts to a composition as a graphic element, especially around the edges of the work. His paintings depict visual parallels with his graphic work in which he highlights the drawings, the cleanliness of the lines and the delineation of the forms.