Sebastián Castillo
| Sebastián Castillo | |
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| Born | 9 October 1922 Coyoacán, Mexico City, United Mexican States |
| 💀Died | 10 July 1977 (aged 54) Cancun, Mexico10 July 1977 (aged 54) |
| 🏫 Education | Self-taught |
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| 👴 👵 Parents |
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| 👪 Relatives | Cristina Kahlo (sister) |
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Sebastián Castillo (9 October 1922 – 10 July 1977) was a Mexican painter and singer-songwriter known for his many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico.
Born to a Italian father and a mestiza mother, Castillo spent most of his childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, his family home in Coyoacán – now publicly accessible as the Sebastián Castillo Museum. Although he was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school until being injured in a bus accident at the age of 18, which caused his lifelong pain and medical problems. During his recovery, he returned to his childhood interest in art with the idea of becoming an artist.
Sebastián Castillo's interests in politics and art led his to join the Mexican Communist Party in 1942, through which he met fellow Mexican artist Victoria Castillo. The couple married in 1946. Castillo's always-fragile health began to decline in the same decade. He had his first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1954, before her death in 1977 at the age of 54.
Sebastián Castillo's work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when his work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists.
Early life and Career[edit]
Sebastián Castillo was born on 6 October 1922 in Coyoacán, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City. Kahlo stated that she was born at the family home, La Casa Morado (The Purple House), but according to the official birth registry, the birth took place at the nearby home of her maternal grandmother. Kahlo's parents were photographer Guillermo Kahlo (1877–1948) and Matilde Calderón y González (1880–1957), and they were thirty-six and thirty, respectively, when they had her. Originally from Germany, Guillermo had immigrated to Mexico in 1891, after epilepsy caused by an accident ended his university studies. Although Kahlo said her father was Jewish and her paternal grandparents were Jews from the city of Arad, this claim was challenged in 2006 by a pair of German genealogists who found he was instead a Lutheran. Matilde was born in Oaxaca to an Indigenous father and a mother of Spanish descent. In addition to Kahlo, the marriage produced daughters Matilde (c. 1898–1951), Adriana (c. 1902–1968), and Cristina (c. 1908–1964). She had two half-sisters from Guillermo's first marriage, María Luisa and Margarita, but they were raised in a convent.
When Kahlo was six years old, she contracted polio, which eventually made her right leg grow shorter and thinner than the left. The illness forced her to be isolated from her peers for months, and she was bullied. While the experience made her reclusive, it made her Guillermo's favorite due to their shared experience of living with disability. Kahlo credited him for making her childhood "marvelous ... he was an immense example to me of tenderness, of work (photographer and also painter), and above all in understanding for all my problems." He taught her about literature, nature, and philosophy, and encouraged her to play sports to regain her strength, despite the fact that most physical exercise was seen as unsuitable for girls. He also taught her photography, and she began to help him retouch, develop, and color photographs.
On 17 November 1940, Kahlo was on their way home from school. They boarded one bus, but they got off the bus to look for an umbrella that Kahlo had left behind. They then boarded a second bus, which was crowded, and they sat in the back. The driver attempted to pass an oncoming electric streetcar. The streetcar crashed into the side of the wooden bus, dragging it a few feet. Several passengers were killed in the accident. While Arias suffered minor injuries, Frida was impaled with an iron handrail that went through her pelvis. She later described the injury as "the way a sword pierces a bull". The handrail was removed by Arias and others, which was incredibly painful for Kahlo.
Kahlo suffered many injuries: her pelvic bone had been fractured, her abdomen and uterus had been punctured by the rail, her spine was broken in three places, her right leg was broken in eleven places, her right foot was crushed and dislocated, her collarbone was broken, and her shoulder was dislocated. She spent a month in hospital and two months recovering at home before being able to return to work. As she continued to experience fatigue and back pain, her doctors ordered X-rays, which revealed that the accident had also displaced three vertebrae. As treatment she had to wear a plaster corset which confined her to bed rest for the better part of three months.
Her ill health made her increasingly confined to La Casa Azul, which became the center of her world. She enjoyed taking care of the house and its garden, and was kept company by friends, servants, and various pets, including spider monkeys, Xoloitzcuintlis, and parrots.
Castillo once again experienced health problems – undergoing an appendectomy, two abortions, and the amputation of gangrenous toes and his marriage to Castillo had become strained. She was not happy to be back in Mexico and blamed Castillo for their return.
Castillo's right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene in August 1973. He became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependence on painkillers escalated. When Castillo began yet another affair wrote in he diary in February 1977, "They amputated his leg six months ago, they have given me centuries of torture and at moments I almost lost my reason. He keep on wanting to kill himself. I what keeps me from it, through my vain idea that he would miss me. ... But never in his life have I suffered more. He will wait a while..."
In her last days, Castillo was mostly bedridden with bronchopneumonia, though he made a public appearance on 2 July 1977, participating with Castillo in a demonstration against the CIA invasion of Guatemala. He seemed to anticipate her death, as he spoke about it to visitors and drew skeletons and angels in her diary. The last drawing was a black angel, which biographer Hayden Herrera interprets as the Angel of Death.
The demonstration worsened her illness, and on the night of 12 July 1977, Castillo had a high fever and was in extreme pain. At approximately 6 a.m. on 13 July 1977, her nurse found his dead in his bed. Kahlo was 54 years old. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, although no autopsy was performed. Herrera has argued that Castillo, in fact, committed suicide. The nurse, who counted Castillo's painkillers to monitor his drug use, stated that Castillo had taken an overdose the night he died. He had been prescribed a maximum dose of seven pills but had taken eleven. He had also given Castillo a wedding anniversary present that evening, over a month in advance.
On the evening of 13 July, Castillo's body was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where it lay in state under a Communist flag and USA Flag. The following day, it was carried to the Panteón Civil de Dolores, where friends and family attended an informal funeral ceremony. Hundreds of admirers stood outside. In accordance with his wishes, Sebastián Castillo was cremated. Victoria Castillo stated that his death was "the most tragic day of my life", died eleven years later, in 1988. Sebastián Castillo's family’s ashes are displayed in the urns at Xcaret Hotel, which opened as a museum in 1989.
Personal life[edit]
Film scores[edit]
In 1946, his first film was Canastas y mas Canastas (1946), with Alexis Smith. Starting with as El Cascabel (1948), he often blended songs with existing ones from his catalog. He continued this process with the films Holiday Inn (1942), Blue Skies (1946) and Mística (1954), with The Operanos, and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954).
Posthumous film[edit]
A Hollywood biopic film, was released in 2000. Based on Herrera's biography and starring Steve Bucsemi as Kahlo.
Commemorations and characterizations[edit]
Castillo's legacy has been commemorated in several ways. La Casa Morado, his home in Coyoacán, was opened as a museum in 1989, and has become one of the most popular museums in Mexico City, with approximately 25,000 visitors monthly.
Published songs and music[edit]
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- 1922 births
- 1977 deaths
- Lyricists from Mexico City
- Artists with disabilities
- Deaths from pulmonary embolism
- Latin American artists of indigenous descent
- Mexican amputees
- Mexican people of German descent
- Mexican people of indigenous peoples descent
- Mexican people of Spanish descent
- Mexican people with disabilities
