Favio Castán

Artist/Writer

1959-2012

Cuban born artist whom after working for the Cuban government’s Ministry of Interior under the KGB’s training and oversight turned to the artist’s brush and writer’s pen as his new weapons to express his ideas and creative mind. Known for his expressive use of bright colors and the looseness of ink, Castán filled the canvas with dense imagery and stories allowing the viewer to discover something new each time.

Castán passed away in 2012 and has left behind a tremendous amount of work. His oldest son, also named Favio Castán, has created this website as a way to pay homage to the man, the artist, the father so that his work can be allowed to live in the perpetuity of the internet. This way anyone could discover his mind and learn his story, and maybe even be inspired.

SELECTED WORKS

Artist’s Statement

In these times of anorexic muses and artificial satellites, where art is always questioned, it survives as a nearly perfect crime. To create is a voluntary skirmish between philosophical deviations and stock market speculation. This is why I try to surprise myself with ancient magical rituals, where the anarchy in the spontaneous mix of pigments that are slightly guided by the will of my brush towards the creation of multiples spots, suggesting the existence of gods and deities that are spying from another world and requiring their intrusive presence.

En estos tiempos de musas anorexicas y satelites artificiales, donde el arte siempre cuestionado, sobrevive como crimen casi perfecto. Crear es una escaramuza voluntaria entre desviaciones filososoficas y especulaciones bursatiles. Por eso intento sorprenderme a mi mismo con antiguos rituales magicos, donde la anarquia en la mescla espontanea de los pigmentos, es ligeramente guiada por la voluntad de mi pincel hacia la creacion de multiples manchas que sugieren la existencias de dioses y deidades que me espian desde otro mundo y exigen su indiscreta presencia.

Favio Castán, 2011

“A writer who paints and a painter who writes, he is able to achieve the mixture of a language where verb and image are brought together to involve the spectator in the artist’s world.
As a painter, Castán gives shape to his poems depicting his environment in the forms of dreams and fantasy. Even though his paintings do not contain the same ironical sense, which characterizes his written works, they can be considered as a chronicle of the human anxiety”