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Férido CastilloLandscape Engraver

Roberto Ponce*

Champa, 70 x 50 cm, 1999 (mixed technique).

A R T A N D C U L T U R E

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His engravings are vibrant printsof the Tabasco jungle. Multi-hued nature carved in black

and white by his hands. A jungle that,unfortunately, is doomed to disappear.Tabasco-born engraver Férido Castillocharged, “The landscape of my home-land has always disquieted me, and todaymore than ever, when the exuberant jun -gle that I saw as a boy is disappearing.”1

Convinced that “the most importantthing is to do your art” instead of being

“a social critic who resolves nothing,”his work “presented the Tabasco jun-gle even though it is disappearing.” Born in 1942 in Cacaos, in the Ta -

bas co mu nicipality of Jalapa, to a peas -ant family, Castillo did many differentkinds of jobs and finally came to con-sider himself a engraver-in-training. In -different to those who considered himold-fashioned, he was proud of livingmodestly in Villahermosa. “I wouldn’tchange my house. I have never beenable to leave Tabasco and I’m not sorry.To be an artist you don’t have to go toa sophisticated school. I have affectionfor this place and the enthusiasm I needto dedicate my life to art here.”In his last engravings, he empha-

sized urban growth “devouring” thenatural areas and their inhabitants.“When I arrived in Villahermosa, down -town was another world. On MaderoStreet a car would barely go by everyfive minutes.” Construction worker, car -penter, newspaper vendor, baker’s helper,dishwasher, market stall salesman, Fé -rido said, “The artist sensitizes themasses. Social themes interest me, butI think that the most important thingis to do your work, not so much get in -volved in social issues.” From the start, he wanted to be a

painter. “In 1963 I was caught up inValeriano Maldonado’s and Jorge Co -ro na’s Cuña Group workshop. In theshort time they were here, they didmurals and gave a workshop. I wantedto paint like Cézanne or Van Gogh, butthey pushed me to develop my ownstyle. So, I got rid of books; I havenone at all now. I want everything thatcomes out of me to be natural, with noinfluence from anyone....I did my firstengraving, a little landscape under Mi -choacán-born teacher Efraín Vargas. Itook it to him and when he saw it, he

* Journalist, translator, singer-songwriter,music critic and entertainment editor inProceso magazine’s cultural section.rponce@proceso.com.mx

The Silk-Cotton Tree, 30 x 39 cm, n.d. (linoleum print).

Engravings and paintings taken from FéridoCastillo: Surco a la luz (Villahermosa: Uni ver -sidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, 2003).Reproduced by permission of the Juárez Au -to nomous University of Tabasco.

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asked me to give him the first print. Thatmade me very happy. It was a very im -portant moment for me.”Then came expositions, good re views,

prizes. In 1979, he made a decision: “Iwas good at engraving and, since thistechnique was practically unknown inTabasco, I said to myself that I was goingto continue learning and teach it.”When asked whether he had ever

felt the need to include the colors ofthe tropics in his work, he answered, “Ihaven’t needed the luminosity of color.I have tried to add it to my engravings,but I didn’t like the results. Those areworks I will never show.”Very close to Villahermosa’s Pino

Suá rez Market, Férido Castillo’s housewas always open to purchasers of thesoft drinks and popsicles that he soldwith his wife, Carmen Pantoja. Thebig living room that gave onto the streetwas a place of movement that doubledas a studio as his children and innume r -able visitors trooped through. There,he explained to me, “My father’s namewas Lucio Castillo; he was a peasant.Consuelo Hernández, my mother, wasa housewife. We lived in Cacaos, a veryold town, in one of those clay housescovered in jahuacté, with a hallway andan earth floor.”His art burst forth from a childhood

enchantment, since as a boy he expe-rienced the legend of the Vernete River:people swore that the siren who dom-inated it kidnapped a man one nightwith the help of a lizard. The womenprayed for him, and when he returned,he told them of the amazing sights hehad witnessed under the water. Cas -tillo told me, “When the lizards makesounds at midnight, people say that itis the man from Vernete who has re -turned. When I was a boy, I heard thatstory and, one morning about seven, I

went there to draw. There was a verythick mist. I heard that loud noise andright there and then I decided I wouldreproduce the flora and swamps of Ta -basco. The thousands of forms of naturein which I found the strength to ex -press myself: the rattan, the parasiticalplants, the very pretty red tree calledpalo mulato, that is like a great god ofthe jungle.”“Sometimes,” he said, “the rays of the

sun filtering through the vegetationland on the palo mulato and illuminatethe bend in the branches, and the barklooks like an incandescent green-blueball of fire in the middle of the jungle.There were still plenty of fish; birds

The Road, 28 x 35.5 cm, n.d. (linoleum print).

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called ‘seven preys’ came to eat theirlittle sardines; white and black her -ons....I have a lively image of my child -hood and I remember that the treeswere so big that their branches inter-twined and crossed from one side ofthe river to the other. You don’t see thatanymore because much of the vegeta-tion has been destroyed and you canonly see pastures. There are no longeras many exotic birds and you can nolonger hear the song of the tutupana,the chachalaca, the iguana or the ga -rrobo lizard. Gone, too, are the soundsof the tiger or the serpents that left alasting impression on me as a child.”When he began to paint he was not

environmentally aware. “This businessof thinking about the fact that with-out the jungle there simply would beno life was not something conscious.I was seeking form and the contrastthat you find from time to time be -tween light and shadow. Because inengraving I seek high contrast, andwhere I achieve it the most is in im -mediate nature, the jungle that I havelived in since childhood.” Just before hedied, in January 2002, he said, “In thejungle, I find the thousands of formsthat I can interpret in my engraving andalso the necessary strength that I seekto present my work. The jungle doesnothing but help me; it is a tremendoussource of inspiration. Before peoplestarted talking about ecology, it wasalready my favorite theme.”

Railing 1, 29 x 38.5 cm, n.d. (linoleum print).

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Until the end of his life in January2002, Férido survived on the 7,000 pe -sos that he earned teaching at the Juá -rez Autonomous University of Tabascoand his wife’s earnings from the littleneighborhood store. Since his engrav-ings were not backed by state promo-tional funds or auctioned in galleries,“Fero” printed t-shirts with Tabascomo tifs from his work. They did not in -terest state cultural or tourism officialseither, and so he could only place themin shops around the Villa her mo sa mar-ket. Some tourist may well have boughtthem, finding traces of Dürer, Doré orthe French impressionists in his ti gers,Olmec heads or exotic plants. A man with hands worn by work in

the countryside and a robust guaya berashirt, Férido Castillo was generous withhis gouge and to his friends. He diedof a stroke at 59 in Reynosa, Tamau li -pas. During his lifetime, no culturalauthority organized a retrospective ofhis work or proposed a catalogue of the500 works he created in black andwhite, with visions of a sober vastnessof vegetation, that were exhibited inNew York, San Luis Potosí, Chiapas, Yu -catán, Ve ra cruz and Mexico City.

NOTES

1 All quotes are taken from two articles bythe author published in Proceso weeklymagazine, issues 593 (14 March 1988),p. 27, and 1316 (20 January 2002), p. 58.

Fronds III, 29 x 38.5 cm, n.d. (linoleum print).