Greetings, today we have a unique long format interview Part One of a Three Part series with Portuguese Ink Artist Pedro De Kastro. In his relentless pursuit of detail, De Kastro wields pencil, China ink, and metal engraving like instruments of alchemy, transmuting light and shadow into haunting, hyper-detailed visions. Below is our conversation with the Artist.
DA&C: You’ve returned to Portugal after time spent living in Brazil. Where did your journey as a creator begin, and how has your environment shaped your artistic voice over the years?
Yes, I returned to Portugal in 2018 after 16 years living in Brazil. I was born in Lisbon and grew up there, right next to the mouth where the Tagus flows into the Atlantic. My journey as a creator began with my felt and ballpoint pens drawings since I was three. To be honest, I never thought that I wanted to be an artist, make a living from my drawings, as I never knew what I wanted to do. In fact, it is a scary thought knowing that you are going to do the same thing the rest of your life. It just happened. In the beginning, since I was a child, I was tormented by vivid and hellish nightmares where my native Lisbon is a world of shadows shipwrecked at the End of Time, reborn after the Nuclear Apocalypse. Many times I dream of the Nuclear Apocalypse itself, with the moment it is really happening. These infected dreams persist until today, now with dark visions regarding several Capitals of the World. Together with those inspiring/terrifying visions, I always had a very fertile imagination that turned out to be dark. It was fueled, I must say that as a child and then as a teenager, by the readings of Jules Verne, Philip K. Dick, many others, lots of Franco-Belgian Comics and American comics, from DC and Marvel.
"In the beginning, since I was a child, I was tormented by vivid and hellish nightmares where my native Lisbon is a world of shadows shipwrecked at the End of Time, reborn after the Nuclear Apocalypse."
The Artist in São Paulo, Brazil, 2007
I saw many sci-fi and adventure, fantasy movies. I can say that the following two films shaped my imagination: Blade Runner and Planet of the Apes. The fabulously dark dystopian world/plot of Blade Runner (My favorite movie ever) and the beautifully brutal and shocking post-apocalyptic ending of Planet of the Apes with the ruin of the Statue of Liberty, half-swallowed in the sand being surrounded by the waves on the beach, blew my 10 year-old mind for the rest of my life. It was around this time that I had my first experiences drawing with Pen and China ink. In 1984, I made a road trip with my parents across Western Europe and I visited the romantic Neuschwanstein Castle, the Black Forest and the gloomy Dachau Concentration Camp, all in Bavaria. In 1988, at the age of 16, I drew my first apocalypses in pen and ink, with Lisbon and in A4 format.
End of Transmission, 1995 - china ink on paper - 60cm x 90 cm in Lisbon, from The End of Time Series
In the end of the eighties and the mad beginning of the nineties, I was totally lost and constantly drifting. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And my ADHD (only recently diagnosed in my turmoiled brain) didn't help me at all. I just didn't know where to fit in. It was very hard to be patient and stay focused. And my spirit restless and distressed, to this day. I had finished my 12th grade not in Arts but in Portuguese Literature and Philosophy to escape Math, which was pure torture to my brain. In Portugal, to go to the Faculty of Fine Arts, you have to follow Math until the 12th grade. All I wanted was to find escapes from reality, problems at home because I failed my entry in University, and a permanent dissatisfaction. Adrenaline was a good escape. I was doing clandestine urban climbing, train surfing, and I had returned from an inter-rail trip across Europe (a train ticket valid for a month for all Europe). I liked the action/adventure image of the Special Forces, and the Portuguese Paratroopers fascinated me. I won the paratrooper beret, it was very hard to win, I jumped out of planes but I also had a serious problem with following orders, teamwork, military discipline, military hierarchy
HELLSPIRES - DETAIL 6, 2006, 42,5x42,5cm Prints available on Dark Art & Craft
In the following years, I lived in several places around Lisbon and worked in various jobs, starting as an employee in a suit and hanging from a tie in a credit card service corporation. I only lasted 4 months in this prison and with my 4 salaries I paid for a civilian skydiving course. Freefalling was a very different sensation, instead of the automatic military fall that I did in the Paras. After a road trip from Lisbon to London, I went from being a loader in sub-zero frozen warehouses, to being a designer illustrator for perfumery windows (where I started to draw my apocalypses in large format in pen and China ink instead of working on what my boss asked me to do and I was fired because of that) and even as a freelance illustrator for the Portuguese Sesame Street children's magazine and creating board games for children, to earn some money. For Sesame Street and these games I painted with the colorful Ecoline watercolors. Total paradox with my dark and depressive apocalypses in pen and ink.
THE AVENUE II - DETAIL 5, 2007, 70x70cm Prints available on Dark Art & Craft
In 1994 and 1995, I studied Drawing in Ar.Co in Lisbon - Art Center of Visual Communication. After the first year, I was already fed up when an enlightened professor suggested I visit an exhibition of Piranesi's engravings in Lisbon. I never heard of Piranesi until then. I went to the Museum, the exhibition had ended but I bought the catalogue. I was stunned by his etchings. That was enough to quit the art school and pursue my own path to create my darkscapes. No art professor could teach me anything about that unbelievable universe. My Universe. It was also in 1994 that I had my first contact with the incredible work of Giger's dark universe, other than just Alien, through a book published by Taschen. Many times I visited too National Museum of Ancient Art where lies the astonishing Bosch's Triptych of Temptation of St. Anthony, another of my Masters.
The Artist, Pedro De Kastro in Sarajevo, 2001
HELLSPIRES, 2006, 42,5x42,5cm Prints available on Dark Art & Craft
One year later, an art dealer friend of mine, with an art business in London, told me to see Gustave Doré engravings. Another extremely important clue that allowed me to develop my self taught techniques. I must say that at this time, I had the luck and privilege of finding in a second-hand bookshop two large original 19th century editions, with thick spines, of Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost, both illustrated by the genius of Doré. In 1996, I had an engraving workshop with Bartolomeu dos Santos, Portuguese cathedratic engraving professor in the Slade School of London. This workshop was given in an engraving gallery/ atelier in Lisbon. There I completed a three month engraving course because of the refined techniques of etching with acids I had to learn with proper professors, just like the old engraving craftsmen. My drawing (and engraving) masters Piranesi and Gustave Doré, who in the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively, reinvented the urban landscape and portrayed psychosocial phobias, the ghosts-children of their times. I try to do the same with my apocalyptic pen and ink scenarios transported to a dark 21st century. Our Era. I did another inter-rail, to Eastern Europe, going to Auschwitz. I read Kafka, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I studied drawing in a self-taught way, I was drawing my apocalypses among the children's illustrations.
Flying with the British Paras in a Royal Air Force C-130 Aircraft, Tancos, 1991
THE REDEEMER, 2010 - Pedro De Kastro Prints Available on Dark Art & Craft
The darkscapes from the far future continued to fascinate me more than anything else, invading my mind everyday. In the middle of the nineties I finally found my catharsis through them. I become addicted to take a known urbanscape from the present day and metamorphose into a ravaged scenery merged in a faraway future. In 1997, I held my first solo exhibition in Lisbon at the Monument of Discoveries and began to participate in group shows. At the same time, through Morpheus International publisher I discovered Barlowe's Inferno and the fantastic Beksinski. And much more from Giger with his giant black albums. In June 2001, I made my second solo show in Lisbon, and in July, I went to Sarajevo, representing Portugal in Drawing at the 10th Biennial of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean and saw many destruction. I was already fed up, distressed about Europe, which had become very small. Then 9/11 happened, which left me even more distressed about the Human Race and the course of the World. All these episodes, and inspirations, along with my dreams and experiences and my spiritual turmoil have shaped my artistic voice over the years. And only in my dark art did I find relief and escape. I needed other horizons. I needed to escape from Europe. But that's another story.
"All these episodes, and inspirations, along with my dreams and experiences and my spiritual turmoil have shaped my artistic voice over the years. And only in my dark art did I find relief and escape."
THE KING, 2000 - 2022 EXPANDED DREAMSCAPE 2022
Pen, pencil, and ink 29,7 x 21 cm - 11.6 x 8.2 in (Original Format) Lisbon - Portugal Series
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Next Up Part Two: with Pedro De Kastro
