Victor Castillo is a Chilean painter currently residing in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Santiago, Chile in 1973, the same year that a military dictatorship was established in the country. Inspired by animation, science fiction movies and illustrations from his family's records, he began drawing obsessively at the age of five. He later studied at the University of Art and Social Sciences (ARCIS) and the Catholic University of Chile. He joined a collective of independent and experimental artists in Santiago who created mixed media, sculpture and video installations.
In 2004 he moved to Barcelona, where he dedicated himself to painting and establishing his style with comics and graffiti as a reference. Over time he adopted aspects of classical painting and began to exhibit his work internationally. His exhibition Explicit Lyrics (Barcelona, 2007) was a crucial success, with the El Pais newspaper dedicating a full page article to his tragicomic vision entitled The Triumph of Pop Surrealism. In 2010 he moved to Los Angeles, where he currently resides. Victor's works are included the traveling exhibition Turn the Page:The First Ten Years of High Fructose (USA, 2016-2017) and in Les Enfantes Terribles, at the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art (France, 2011). Also in international art fairs in Santiago, Hong Kong, Istanbul or Mexico City, as well as in newspapers, magazines and publications. He has created large-scale murals at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile (MNBA), in Santiago; at the Centro Gabriela Mistral (GAM) in Santiago, Chile; at the Museo de Arte Moderno Chiloé; at the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona (CCCB), Spain; La Fabricca del Vapore in Milan, Italy and at the Contemporary Istanbul art fair, among other installations. With his works, Victor Castillo tells stories. Like a contemporary chronicle, his paintings appropriate the narrative and logic of children's story illustration and the aesthetics of classical animation to present allegories about cruelty, fear, rebellion, greed, indoctrination, violence and other abuses of power that the artist sees as an imposition on a global scale. His colorful work has been described as political poetry that comes from the Latin American experience.