By the Arks (By the Arch)

Federico Castellon

This lithograph was done as Castellon was transitioning from Surrealism to a more social commentary idiom, was published in 1941 by Associated American Artists (AAA) in New York and was the fourth print he did for them. Though normally titled "By the Arks" the work is titled "By the Arch" in the Freundlich catalogue raisonné. Both titles apply.

Castellon refers back to his childhood and time in Spain in this lithograph. Spanish boatbuilders with docked boats they are repairing, take refuge from the sun under the hanging fishnets. One fisherman extends his hand to a woman, a vender who carries a basket on her hip, as the other fisherman watches.

"By the Arks" has a kinship to an earlier Surrealist lithograph from around 1939 titled "Of Land and Sea" where he uses the same two fishermen with a nude woman seated between them. Hovering over them is a ship's bow with a similar carved figurehead.