James Castle (American, 1899 to 1977)
Born deaf and with limited means of communication, James Castle made art from the time he was six. Castle worked intensively, creating two- and three-dimensional works of art with the advertisements, periodicals, sticks, string, and packaging at hand in the Idaho homes he shared with his always supportive parents and siblings. He folded and bound paper and he painted with soot and improvised colors. He brought forth unmistakable representations of the world he knew: family members, local farms, household objects, his homes. He brought forth his interior world, as well, in invented words and symbols, fantastical calendars, and books with cryptic pictorial narratives.
In the early 1950s, a nephew attending the Museum Art School in Portland, Oregon showed some of Castle’s drawings to instructors. This led to exhibitions throughout the Northwest U.S. and one-person shows in 1963 and 1976 at the Boise Gallery of Art (now the Boise Art Museum), Boise, Idaho. Castle has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., which holds one of the largest public collections of Castle’s works. His work was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the subject of the documentary James Castle: Portrait of an Artist. The James Castle Collection and Archive (JCCA) in Boise, Idaho maintains his drawings, handmade books, and constructions, in addition to his tools, supplies, source materials, family photographs, and historical documents.
Information Courtesy of Rago Arts, October, 2019.