El nadador, 1978

Jorge Castillo  

El nadador (The Swimmer) is an original etching of 1978 by Jorge Castillo, printed in the large format of 100 x 70 cm and issued in an edition of 75 copies, with additional artist's proofs and hors-commerce impressions. It belongs to the same moment as Escena campestre, also of 1978, when Castillo produced a series of large intaglio plates that are among the most ambitious of his graphic work. Etching is the natural medium for an artist whose reputation rests above all on drawing: the needle allows the long, sinuous, uninterrupted line with which Castillo builds his figures, often nude, fragmented or metamorphosed, floating in an open, dreamlike space. The subject of the swimmer, a body suspended in water, lends itself to that fluid line and to the play of transparency and void that characterises his compositions. Jorge Castillo (Pontevedra, 1933) grew up in Buenos Aires and developed an international career between Spain, Geneva, Paris, Berlin and New York. A prodigious and prolific draughtsman, he has created a fantastic, profoundly personal figurative universe, between memory, eroticism and myth, which places him among the most singular Spanish artists of his generation.