Sergio de Castro
1922–2012 · Argentine painter, muralist and stained-glass artist based in Paris
Sergio Federico de Castro (Buenos Aires, 1922 - Paris, 2012) was an Argentine painter, muralist and stained-glass artist who built his career mainly in France. Although he trained as a musician, he is today best known for monumental art and for stained glass made for religious and public settings.
Born into an aristocratic family, he spent his early childhood in Switzerland because of his father's diplomatic posts. In 1941 he began studying painting and monumental art with Joaquín Torres García in Uruguay, and he worked with the members of that studio on the murals of the Martirené Pavilion at the Saint Bois Hospital in Montevideo. After settling in Argentina and travelling to the northwest of the country and southern Peru to study pre-Hispanic art, he moved to Paris in 1949, and from 1951 he devoted himself fully to painting.
Among his monumental works are La creación del mundo (1956-1958), a set of stained-glass panels for the Benedictine monastery church at Couvrechef, near Caen; Redemption (1968-1969), for the Lutheran Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Kirche in Hamburg; and Los profetas (1978-1981), five windows for the collegiate church of Romont, in Switzerland. He also produced murals for the lobby of the Atochem company in La Défense.
His friendship with the writer Julio Cortázar led him to inspire the painter Etienne in Rayuela. In 2006 he donated 220 works to the Musée de Saint-Lô. He is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.