Pedro de Kastro

Biography

Pedro De Kastro was born in Lisbon in 1971. At age 19 he enlisted as a volunteer in the Portuguese Paratroopers. Several driftings later, he re-initiated his autodidact studies. In 2001, PDK went to Sarajevo, representing Portugal in Drawing at the Tenth Bienniale of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean. At the end of that year, he left the Old World, crossing the Atlantic and the Equator towards South America, more precisely Brazil, where he lived until 2018. Pedro De Kastro’s imaginary landscapes are created with china ink techniques that recollect the European engraving techniques from the 18th and 19th centuries. His china ink drawings and etchings draw their oneiric atmosphere from the works of the great masters of engraving and illustration like Albrecht Dürer, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, or Gustave Doré. Those illustrious craftsmen put in their visions the phantoms of their eras. In the same way, the images in Kastro’s work are impregnated by the phobias of his own temporal universe, that of the 21st century, with its industrial and nuclear nightmares, and longing to escape. His journeys throughout Europe, which left deep impressions upon him, as well as engravings from 18th and 19th Century German Romantics, a few modern masters, science-fiction and adventure movies, European and American comics from the ’70s and the ’80s, have served as his sources of visual inspiration.

Artist Statement

Since I was a child that I am tormented by hellish nightmares where Lisbon is a world of shadows shipwrecked at the End of Time. These dark dreams persist until today, now with sublime visions regarding the Capitals of the World but they are so real that I feel like I have already been in that forgotten future.

I create monumental landscapes where well-known cities become surreal sceneries fulfilled with a powerful message. Symbolic elements entwine around the aged World icons, insanely detailed and produced through European engraving and rendering techniques from the 18th century, although my visions are impregnated by the psycho-sociological, industrial and nuclear nightmares of our Third Millenium

You will collide into the Golden Gate Bridge, the Chrysler Building or the Arc of Triumph, among so many others, merged in a far future where you don’t only find yourself in a surrounding scenery so familiar in your present, but you can also see how the mighty hammer of Time will work on its towers, avenues and bridges in many ages to come as no one has never seen before

When we see a World’s hallmark made by man, deeply embedded in our collective memory and devoured by Time, Global Warming and War, our Imagination is strongly impacted, traveling without limits, transforming our own reality into another one much worse and possible. Nevertheless, still avoidable and strangely nostalgic

My art reflects on the contemporary situation of the planet, revealing what our Earth can become. Through it, I show, or at least I try to show, in the middle of this nightmare, that the world where we live is, even with all the misfortunes that haunt it, a planet with beautiful things where one can live. Where one can see the sky. Where the sea is blue. Where the plants are green. Where the Sun shines. Where one can breathe. For the time being……………….