Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

          Solid metal, that is the chief medium of Castrillo’s immaculately crafted  sculptures, embodies the uncanny skill and talent of the artist.  His workshop  is nothing short of a beehive of activity, wherein he studies his medium in  their variant behavior and exploits them with a burst of energy, resulting in a wondrous output of metalworks.
          An exquisite cross-breeding of a blacksmith and a sculptor, Eduardo Castrillo,  led a renaissance of sculpture in the Philippines.  Aware of his social  responsibility, his works are reflections of an artist caught between an era  of his country’s search for its true self, while still relying on his own ingenuity.
          The paradoxical description of Castrillo’s works as being simple yet complicated is an unpretentious flattery of how the master himself uncomplicatedly created labyrinthian masterpieces using modest geometric figures.
          As Castrillo himself said: “I love the physicality of sculpture.  The heavy duty  labor that goes with it and the challenges of taming the material, controlling the tough solidity of the medium and molding it into something flesh-like, lifelike.”