Bolivia's Ark, 2013

Iván Castellón Quiroga  

Born in 1960 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Ivan Castellón is a sociologist and plastic artist. He has written several books based on his studies of Bolivian society and its tensions. He studied painting at the Superior Institute of Plastic Arts “Raul G. Prada" in Cochabamba, and at the Superior Institute of Art in Habana, Cuba. He has exhibited widely in Bolivia and abroad; and has received multiple awards at a national level, among them: “First Place in Painting" at the 1997 National Salon for Plastic Arts "Alfredo Domínguez" in Sucre, the “Grand Price in Plastic Arts" at the 2004 International Festival of Cultures in Potosí, and the “First Place" at the VI National Painting Competition held in Oruro in 2011.

About his work, Cuban art historian Eduardo Izquierdo Reyes, points out: “When penetrating Ivan Castellón Quiroga´s works, we discover his personal view of nature presented through solid pictorial values: an interlaced and compact compositive structure, expressive texture and visual impact, and a properly conceived contrast of light, shade, and shadows" (La Habana, 1991).

The curators Micaela Pentimalli and Paula Luján, coincide in affirming: “Social concerns vibrate in Iván Castellón´s painting through an expressionist dimension, where two elements play an important role: a marked texture and the contrast between a dominant bituminous black and sparkles of shining color. His landscapes, beyond a testimony of collective pain, constitute an outcry for the universal anguish of the human collective" (Cochabamba, 1995).

In words of Mexican journalist, historian, and art critic; Ana Meléndez Crespo: “What an amazing way to represent, with acute brushstrokes, zigzag lines and square atomism; the symbolism of the modern city! Castellón exploits the naive form, with the style of the Andean textile figures. Land and territory, indigenous heroines and Mother Earth contain country and city life alike. His peasants and woman are in a constant social struggle. There are animals and traditional symbols, all of them simple, tenuous basic traces of men and women. What is he trying to tell us when he portrays rows of people taken by the hands, or when he concentrates people in full action in the middle of a composition? Maybe the joyous marketplace days, the festive Sundays, mornings, melodies, or afternoons of political protest" (Mexico, 2010).