By: Roger Boschman

The Asia Magazine, March 28, 1982, pp 6-7, (cover story)

Find a large room. Place in it ninety-nine people, each from a different profession or occupation–a lawyer, a teacher, a taxi driver, a vacuum cleaner salesman, and so on. Now add Eduardo Castrillo. Then ask a total stranger to look into the room and pick out the artist, a dedicated sculptor who has devoted his life to liberating Asian art, donated dozens of huge sculptures and years of his young life to taking his nation’s culture back to the people of his country. And the stranger would pick out the wrong man.

Now tell the stranger to look around and select a young rebel, a freedom fighter who has perhaps mellowed a little in recent years, who is willing to tell his story to anyone expressing an interest, yet still reserves the right to tell anybody to go jump into the lake. He might say: “Is it that tall, lanky one in the corner, the one with the unruly hair and the leather jacket?” Then you would say: “No! That’s the sculptor!”

Possibly “commercialism”, the need to make a living from his work, has mellowed the rebel slightly, but there remains a deep dedication to his lifetime vow to give Asian art its rightful place in Asia first, then, if possible, in the rest of the world. Already, his works stand in Philadelphia, U.S.A. and in other parts of the globe, but Eduardo Castrillo thinks of himself as the artist who “stayed home”, sticking to the traditional styles, and contributing his talent to the masses of his people. His works may appear in western capitals, but the ones that matter most are those he has placed in the rural landscapes of the Philippine Island, where the ordinary people, who may have no knowledge whatever of art, can look up to his work and say: “Its about us!”