FEDERICO CASTELLÓN

A self-taught artist and young prodigy, Castellón moved from his native Spain to Brooklyn, New York with his family at the age of seven. He was, even at this age, a gifted draughtsman and sketched relentlessly, and he spent his childhood taking advantage of the new city he lived in by visiting museums and exhibitions constantly. By the time he was a teenager, Castellón’s inspirations ranged from the Old Masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the burgeoning, contemporary Surrealist scene he had witnessed at small galleries. Before he had even graduated high school, he had caught the attention of Diego Rivera, who by this point was internationally acclaimed with public murals across the country. It was with Rivera’s help that Castellón travelled across Europe in his early twenties, taking in the emerging avant-garde and, on his return to New York, laid his claim as the very first American Surrealist. His etchings and sketches circulated the country and contributed to the rise of one of the most consequential movements of the century.

CLAUDE MONET

In the suburb of Le Havre, a wealthy suburb of Northern France, Claude Monet saw the world changing. He had grown up by the seaside, on beaches just like the one depicted here, and knew well the rural life of the areas, small towns serving locals and dominated by a thriving fishing industry. Yet as industrialism took over the nation, train services connected these once self-sustaining communities to the major cities and brought with them an influx of tourists escaping metropolis for weekends by the sea. In his depiction of Saint-Andresse, Monet captures this duality. The foreground is dominated by fishermen, their boats resting on the sand as they mill around and smoke their pipes, wearing hardy and utilitarian garb. Yet behind them, sitting on the beach, a couple look out to sea, the woman in a flowing white dress with an accent of red below here. These are the city folk, representing modernity itself that is slowly encroaching on traditional, rural life. Monet makes no moral judgement, but the work is one of quiet conflict between two types of life, learning to exist together.

DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ

At the age of twelve, Diego Velázquez joined the workshop of Francisco Pacheco, a painter, sculptor, and art theorist. He saw in the young man an irrepressible talent, and spent the next six years teaching him his craft, and his theories. Velázquez spent much of his time in Pacheco’s studio painting the wooden sculptures that were commissioned by various churches and collectors across Spain, and when he left Pacheco’s tutelage at the age of 18, it is unsurprising that his paintings had remarkably sculptural qualities to them. This work, ‘The Immaculate Conception’, is one of the earliest known works by the great Spanish master, and it’s rendering of the Virgin Mary seems to place her across three dimensions. The folds of her drapery seem to be deeply carved, the clasped, praying hands emerging towards us, and her form perfectly balanced atop the moon. Velázquez is able to make her feel at once totally alive, and entirely sculptural, a fitting dialogue for the sinless mother of Christ who balances divinity and humanity upon her shoulders.