Luis Castellanos (Madrid, 1915-1946), born into an artistic environment, enrolled at the Escuela Municipal de Artes Industriales [Municipal School of Industrial Arts] at the age of 14. The arrival of Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres García in Madrid in 1932 opened new perspectives for him. Castellanos went on to participate in the collective exhibition held at the Salón de Otoño [Autumn Salon] which served as the inaugural show for the Grupo de Arte Constructivo [Constructive Art Group], which included Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Germán Cueto, Eduardo Díaz Yepes, Julio González, Maruja Mallo, Francisco Mateos, José Moreno Villa, Benjamín Palencia, and Antonio Rodríguez Luna. After Torres García returned to Montevideo in 1934, Luis Castellanos joined the first Vallecas School alongside Maruja Mallo, Benjamín Palencia and Alberto Sánchez.

Between 1935 and 1936, he produced Constructivist works that he alternated with figurative compositions. He joined the ADLAN (Amics de l’Art Nou)[Friends of the New Art] group, an artistic movement founded in Barcelona in 1932 by Joan Prats, Josep Lluis Sert, and Joaquim Gomis with the objective of promoting avant-garde art. In 1946, the year of his death, Castellanos presented his work at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Madrid as part of a conference entitled “Realidad y realismo” [Reality and Realism], in which he distinguished two systems of reality in painting: “a reality that captures appearance, and a reality that permeates presence.”