J.Dalcastagné
The story of Julia Dalcastagné is a journey rich in experiences, beginning in Florianópolis, where she was born, into a family with roots in different parts of Brazil. Her father, from Belém do Pará, and her mother, from Nova Trento, Santa Catarina, did not expect her to pursue an artistic path, since both came from the exact sciences. However, art always had a place in her life, with her father playing the piano and mandolin, which awakened in Julia the desire to learn music at a very young age. Thus, her artistic initiation began with the piano.
Despite her love of drawing, she did not have formal painting lessons until she entered college. However, during childhood, she drew daily while watching TV. This period was marked by her education at the Waldorf Anabá school, where she came into contact with various forms of artistic expression, such as calligraphy, watercolor, clay and woodworking, which developed her skill with different materials. Even so, Julia faced an internal conflict, as her tastes oscillated between the "pop" and the dark, and this was reflected in her artistic preferences.
During a year in London, while her father was doing postdoctoral research, Julia had a cultural immersion that changed her life. Museums, such as the National Gallery, became weekly meeting points, where she drew inspiration from iconic works and developed her passion for realism. This period was fundamental to her artistic development, as she began exploring new drawing techniques on her own, using graphite pencils, charcoal and crayons. The work "A Grotesque Old Woman" by Quinten Massys, which she discovered at the museum, was one of her major influences.
Upon returning to Brazil, Julia found in art a way to cope with the difficulties of adolescence and readjusting to her homeland. She temporarily abandoned realism and immersed herself in caricatured characters, influenced by her new passion for literature, especially realist authors such as Machado de Assis and Eça de Queiroz. During this period, her art began to acquire a more defined identity, and she expressed herself through drawings in India ink, correction fluid and red pen, always accompanied by short phrases that conveyed profound reflections.
Choosing to study Visual Arts was a natural decision for Julia, and her parents supported her. At university, she found the space to experiment with techniques such as gouache, acrylic and oil, and began to develop a deep interest in artists such as Francisco Goya. Her final graduation project was a tribute to the creator of Monica's Gang, Mauricio de Sousa, with whom she had the opportunity to interact at a conference.
After graduating, Julia spent a year in Italy, in Milan, where she specialized in comics and illustration. There, she refined her drawing techniques and immersed herself in complementary courses in calligraphy and Pollymer Clay, which allowed her to explore the three-dimensionality of her characters.
Upon returning to Brazil, Julia began dedicating herself to illustration and drew inspiration from artists such as Camille Rose Garcia and Ayami Kojima, who combine vibrant colors with intense shadows. In recent years, Julia has resumed using oil paint, seeking the refinement that only this technique provides, blending the realism that marked her youth with the more caricatural side of her artistic journey.
Julia has participated in several exhibitions, including the Luxemburg Art Prize, the Bela Bienal do Rio and shows in Osaka, Paris, Finland, Portugal, Barcelona and Belgium. Establishing herself as a committed artist, constantly evolving. Her art, which moves between the dark and the beautiful, reflects her influences and personal experiences.
Process
Creative
Music, books and films play an essential role in J. Dalcastagné's creative process, directly influencing the titles of his works, many of which are inspired by music during their creation. This approach reveals her intention to deeply investigate feelings and the development of human thought.
Aesthetically, her work stand out for the strong presence of illustration elements. One of the most notable aspects is the outline of the shapes, defined by expressive lines that delimit the figures. Her vibrant palettes contrast boldly with black, often used as an element of visual balance. In particular, the brushstrokes on the faces of the figures carry an exaggerated touch, with emphasis on the eyes , which become the focus of his illustrative composition.
Another characteristic is the semi-realistic treatment of the faces. Although they are close to reality, these representations never aim to create a literal reproduction. The goal is to provoke the viewer to search for a point of reference that connects the work to reality, enabling recognition and identification. This aesthetic choice offers the audience contact with the human, evoking visual sensations and illusions that broaden the understanding of what it means to be human.
J. Dalcastagné's work is also an exercise in reflection. Her work function as a book that educates and provokes critical thinking or as an intimate diary, focused on self-knowledge. Through this balance between reality and illustration, her work invite us to look critically and sensitively at everyday situations that are often ignored, connecting art and humanity in a deep and thought-provoking dialogue.
SENSOCRITIC
J. Dalcastagné is an artist who explores in her works, experiences and peculiar sensations of everyday life, which generate involuntary thoughts, often followed by automatic reactions. These feelings of depreciation, exclusion, and evil, (which are often uncontrollable), if discovered by the thinker himself in time, can be shaped so that attitudes do not demonstrate the truth of these uncontrollable feelings. These involuntary feelings in contrast to the attitudes taken are the themes addressed in the artist's works.
From this point of view, it is possible to understand that opposites intertwine in the artist's works, creating the "ugly yet beautiful". This is achieved with the help of vibrant colors interacting with a large amount of black and dark colors, which ends up creating a kind of friendly aggressiveness. The lines used to outline the object of his work are also a great contribution to this aesthetic. They result in a more aggressive look, and at the same time, by having an aesthetic close to book illustration, obtaining a more childish and raw vision for his works. J. Dalcastagné
Parasite Woman_2021
CRITICISM
Julia Dalcastagné’s paintings emerge from a unique universe derived from references to anime, Edgar Allan Poe’s literature and human fantasy situations, the pieces present themselves with provocative narrative content. The characters’ imagination and dreamlike state mix with real psychological appearances, offering clues to the audience that raise questions about the existence and value of illusions. Opposites interact in the images: beauty and ugliness; light and shadow; good and evil. The challenge of fear mixed with tenderness fills the space of the canvases, leaving no physical clues for the translucent and distant eyes of the figures, representing vacant looks, immersed in their own thoughts.
Sandra Correia Favero
Professor of Visual Arts at UDESC
Julia Dalcastagné’s paintings emerge from a unique universe derived from references to anime, Edgar Allan Poe’s literature and human fantasy situations, the pieces present themselves with provocative narrative content. The characters’ imagination and dreamlike state mix with real psychological appearances, offering clues to the audience that raise questions about the existence and value of illusions. Opposites interact in the images: beauty and ugliness; light and shadow; good and evil. The challenge of fear mixed with tenderness fills the space of the canvases, leaving no physical clues for the translucent and distant eyes of the figures, representing vacant gazes, immersed in their own thoughts.
In Utero_2024
There are artists who paint the visible world, its scenes, its objects, its recognizable forms. Julia Dalcastagné chooses a rarer path: she paints what remains after everything collapses. What is left in the gaze of childhood, what memory could not forget, what the unconscious tries to hide under masks, frills, and wide smiles.
Her pictorial language operates on a threshold between the grotesque and the enchanting, as if her figures were born from a dream interrupted by an ancient whisper. These are images that carry the pulse of symbolism, the melancholy of expressionism, the theatricality of pop surrealism, but all filtered through an absolutely original voice. The world that Julia constructs does not depend on influences; it is self-sufficient in its organic strangeness, in its smooth bodies, dilated eyes, restrained gestures, and atmospheres as dense as a sleepless childhood.
Her style is highly recognizable: female or androgynous figures, with large, abyss-like features, enveloped in costumes that seem to have emerged from an existential cabaret, a silent opera, or a play without an audience. The compositions are rich, yet balanced. Each element carries symbolic weight, be it a feather, a ribbon, a stained handkerchief—everything has a function within the narrative which, even silent, imposes itself as if it had already lived an entire life before being painted.
Julia's palette is deliberately intense: shades of blood and gray, violets, glossy blacks, dead whites, nocturnal blues. There are no vibrant colors in a celebratory sense, but vibrant in the sense of pulsating, sickly, witnessing. Light, when it appears, is almost always internal, emanating from the eyes or from magical objects. It is an emotional illumination, never descriptive.
There is a texture in the works that resists polishing. The paint becomes matter, almost flesh, in reliefs that reinforce the tactile, ritualistic, and somber aspect of her painting. Julia doesn't seduce the viewer, she captures them. And then, perhaps, sets them free.
Julia Dalcastagné constructs a universe where time stands still, where traumas become allegories, and where the feminine transmutes into fantasy, animality, childhood, and memory. Her art is not meant to be understood quickly. It is meant to be inhabited.
Because there are pains that only symbols can console, and Julia, with her courageous and delicately cruel painting, gives us the images that were missing to name the unspeakable.
Marisa Melo
Business consultant in the art market, curator and founding partner of UP Time Art Gallery.
The Hydra