El Valle Series
El Valle Series
El Valle is Spanish for "the valley"and this is in reference to the central valley of Anahuac in Mexico before the conquest. This valley was what surrounded Lake Texcoco, where the Aztec's capital of Tenochtitlan was found. Mario Castillo used the Mexica culture as a basis for his El Valle Series, which are mostly drawings, dating from around 1974 to 1982. Castillo's concern with this body of work was to make reference to Anahuac iconography without copying from it directly.
These drawings done in colored pencil and mixed media relate to the work Mario Castillo was doing in 1961 when he was influenced by cave art and dealt with the approach of juxtaposing and superimposing separate realities over each other as Paleolithic art had done. They also relate to what Castillo had done in electronic music (1970-1974), in which he attempted to create "Fictional-Ethno" music. With this body of work, Mario Castillo was visually creating a fictional Mesoamerican mythology.
Beyond this, these works are influenced by Escher's prints and the way he dealt with ambiguous figure-ground relationships in his work. Consequently the El Valle series makes direct use of surrealism combined with Pre-Hispanic influences which are dreamed-up, meaning that Castillo was not looking at anything specifically pre- Columbian but instead imagined them how they might be.
But these works are not simply about made-up ancient Pre-Conquest art, for they seem to strike a chord related to the anguish associated with our present day human condition. Therefore, the iconography found in these works does not only deal with invented Pre-Columbian symbolism but also with universal themes. In El Valle, birth, life, death, and the afterlife are all intermingled in a cyclic generation of images. Mario Castillo first displays his interest in universal religions in these works, bringing together cross-cultural symbols on the same visual plane. In the late Chupicuaro and current work, this multicultural approach becomes more prominent.
Mario Castillo's concern for psychology is also evident in these works, along with visual poetry, nature, and the internal universe of humanity i.e. our collective unconscious. Here, Castillo refers to the "internal" reality we use in order to make sense of our habitat. It is this consciousness that gives us an awareness of our place in this world and gives us a sense of how we fit and are able to connect to the external and larger reality of who we are as individual members of the human race.
Most El Valle works are a conglomeration of forms contained within an overall organic shape that floats within a white background. These works generally seem to show a central focal point from which movement is implied by shapes, lines, and color radiating outwardly to the peripheral margins and sometimes corners. This point becomes the apparent vortex of energy around which the work revolves. One seems to sense the Ying and the Yang; positive and negative forces at work.
M. C. Escher at Reuven Tsur's PsyArt Internet Journal
Mexica-Aztec Art at Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology
Paleolithic art at M. Hoover and San Antonio College
Anahuac Valley in Wikipedia
El Valle is Spanish for "the valley"and this is in reference to the central valley of Anahuac in Mexico before the conquest. This valley was what surrounded Lake Texcoco, where the Aztec's capital of Tenochtitlan was found. Mario Castillo used the Mexica culture as a basis for his El Valle Series, which are mostly drawings, dating from around 1974 to 1982. Castillo's concern with this body of work was to make reference to Anahuac iconography without copying from it directly.
These drawings done in colored pencil and mixed media relate to the work Mario Castillo was doing in 1961 when he was influenced by cave art and dealt with the approach of juxtaposing and superimposing separate realities over each other as Paleolithic art had done. They also relate to what Castillo had done in electronic music (1970-1974), in which he attempted to create "Fictional-Ethno" music. With this body of work, Mario Castillo was visually creating a fictional Mesoamerican mythology.
Beyond this, these works are influenced by Escher's prints and the way he dealt with ambiguous figure-ground relationships in his work. Consequently the El Valle series makes direct use of surrealism combined with Pre-Hispanic influences which are dreamed-up, meaning that Castillo was not looking at anything specifically pre- Columbian but instead imagined them how they might be.
But these works are not simply about made-up ancient Pre-Conquest art, for they seem to strike a chord related to the anguish associated with our present day human condition. Therefore, the iconography found in these works does not only deal with invented Pre-Columbian symbolism but also with universal themes. In El Valle, birth, life, death, and the afterlife are all intermingled in a cyclic generation of images. Mario Castillo first displays his interest in universal religions in these works, bringing together cross-cultural symbols on the same visual plane. In the late Chupicuaro and current work, this multicultural approach becomes more prominent.
Mario Castillo's concern for psychology is also evident in these works, along with visual poetry, nature, and the internal universe of humanity i.e. our collective unconscious. Here, Castillo refers to the "internal" reality we use in order to make sense of our habitat. It is this consciousness that gives us an awareness of our place in this world and gives us a sense of how we fit and are able to connect to the external and larger reality of who we are as individual members of the human race.
Most El Valle works are a conglomeration of forms contained within an overall organic shape that floats within a white background. These works generally seem to show a central focal point from which movement is implied by shapes, lines, and color radiating outwardly to the peripheral margins and sometimes corners. This point becomes the apparent vortex of energy around which the work revolves. One seems to sense the Ying and the Yang; positive and negative forces at work.
M. C. Escher at Reuven Tsur's PsyArt Internet Journal
Mexica-Aztec Art at Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology
Paleolithic art at M. Hoover and San Antonio College
Anahuac Valley in Wikipedia
