February 3 - 27, 2010

Opening Reception Thursday, February 4th from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce its second exhibition of the works of James Castle. 

James Castle (1900 – 1977) devoted his quiet life to making small art objects, drawings and books painted, drawn and constructed from used materials found in his rural homestead near Boise, Idaho. Born deaf, Castle never learned signing or lip reading and instead taught himself a rigorous personal creative language using discarded milk cartons, matchboxes, chimney soot, his own saliva and colors squeezed from wet tissue paper. In an hermetic environment with limited communication with relatives who cared for him, Castle constructed arresting images and objects based on his observed surroundings: interiors, people, animals, and farm landscape. Some works are composed from words and images seen in print, which carried a special fascination for the artist.

The exhibition “James Castle:  A Retrospective”, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be on view at the Berkeley Art Museum, February 3rd to April 25th, 2010.

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/press/release/TXT0250

Castle’s unique objects are represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The New York Public Library, the Museum of American Folk Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Boise Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Henry Art Gallery, the High Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

On Feb. 19th art historian and curator Robert Storr will present a talk on Castle at the Berkeley Art Museum. Click here for details