Collage

This body of work is representative of Mario Castillo's use of the Collage medium. Much of Castillo's collages may be found under Chupicuaro (Chupicuaro Collages). In the world of Art to collage is to paste paper unto another paper ground. This is the typical approach, but collage can be done on any surface. Any type of adhesive will do to constitute it as a collage, but in our contemporary world, most collages are done with acrylic polymer emulsion. This is true in the Fine Arts, while in the contemporary Arts and Crafts Movement, collage is done with a variety of glues. Sobo a PVA (Polyvinyl acetate) glue is very popular.

In the old days, artists who made collages used natural glues such as wheat paste, rabbit-skin glue or cornstarch. Other natural adhesives are beeswax, isinglass (from fish), cowhide glue, egg white glue, pine wood tar, and animal bone glue.

Mario Castillo's collages tend to become related to the subject and theme of the photographs being used. However, sometimes he uses color for the sake of color to achieve his compositional objectives. Although he likes the hands-on experience of cutting and pasting paper, Castillo realizes that the photomontage aspect of collage has been greatly improved by the digital medium. An artist nowadays can produce wondrous "Collage" effects using Adobe Photoshop.

See one of Pablo Picasso's earliest collages Glass and Bottle of Suze (1912), at a web page from Washington University, in St Louis.

Glass and Bottle of Suze (1912)