Byron Galvez
He went to Mexico City to study art at both the undergraduate and graduate level, but never completed his degrees, opting instead to begin career after his coursework.
Before his first individual exhibition, his work was criticized by Justino Fernández, but all of the paintings were sold in advance to foreign buyers including American actor Vincent Price, who called Gálvez a “Mexican Picasso.” Gálvez then managed to replace the forty five paintings for the exhibition in a week.
[2][3] His father, Roberto Gálvez, was a farmer and merchant, who was a music and literature enthusiast, a rarity is 1930s rural Mexico.
The artist was named after Lord Byron, and his brothers, Eliot, Aníbal and Dante, after his father's reading preferences.
However, instead of music or literature, Gálvez stated that his earliest memories related to his attraction to art and that he always wanted to be a painter.
The difficulties of farm life convinced him that he needed an education and would have to move to Mexico City in order to go to school.
[3] The couple first met in 1973, but did not meet again until two years later, when Beloglovsky bought one of his paintings and sold two more through her art gallery.
[7] Although he began and developed much of his career in Mexico City, in his later life, the artist moved back to his rural hometown.
The structure has glass walls positioned for maximum light and a privileged view of a local landmark, a hill called El Elefante.
[3][10] During his career, he exhibited individually and collectively in over sixty venues in Mexico, various cities in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
[2][4] In 1964, he had his first individual exhibition at the ENAP Gallery, after showing in collective exhibitions at the Palacio de Bellas Artes and private galleries along with more prominent painters such as José Chávez Morado, Alfredo Zalce, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Carlos Orozco Romero and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
[2][4] After his death, the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores sponsored an exhibition of his work in Tainan, Taiwan in 2011.
[4][13] These include a mural at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City (1970), a thirty-foot high sculpture in Unidad Morelos in Mexico City (1971), a hand hammered copper triptych for a private residence in Mexico City (1984), a sculpted door for a private residence (1985), a sculpture for a private home in New York (1986), Reclined Torso at the Hotel Nikko Mexico (1998), Torso I a five-foot high sculpture for the city of Pachuca (1999), Torso II a nineteen foot high sculpture at the Altiva Building, Mexico City (1999), Millennium, a bronze sculpture/fountain at the highway entrance to Pachuca (2000), a sculpture garden for Mixquiahuala, Hidalgo (2005) and the master plan and central mosaic for the David Ben Gurion Cultural Park in Pachuca (2005) .
[4] After his death, his hometown named their cultural center after him,[11] and he was awarded a merit medal posthumously by the governor of the state.
[3] He work has been influenced by the Cubism of Picasso and Georges Braque, by African and Oceanic folk art and by pre-Columbian sculpture.
[3] Galvez's work experienced periods in which different artistic currents dominated including expressionism, abstract art and mixtures of the two.
[2] Despite their abstract quality, his paintings have an intense romanticism which arises from a mixture of nostalgia and affection, showing the influence of Rodríguez Luna and Santos Balmori.
