Byron Galvez
Encyclopedia
Byron Galvez was a Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

.

He painted in an abstract figurative style that borders on abstract expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

. The artist was influenced by Picasso's and Braque's cubism of 1907, by color blending from his Mexican heritage, and by African, Oceanian, and pre-Columbian sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

.

One of Byron's most notable and impressive works is the 345,000 square foot (32,000 m²) mosaic located in the David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...

 Cultural Park in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. It is likely the largest in the world.

In many of the standing figure compositions Byron moves closer to abstraction than the original cubists did. But the balance between the figurative and the abstract in his unique visual images is always under control. Preoccupied with texture, Byron uses a secret method of applying thick oil paint to his canvases and additional texture plates to his graphics.
The artist does not consider himself rebellious but rather an artist beyond rebellion who has integrated the themes and styles into his time. In style, Byron has gone back to the great analytic cubist canvases of Braque and Picasso. He constructs his elongated, mostly standing figures out of sharply defined planes to which he adds color to the darkness.
Energy, verve, and the colorful movement—so much a part of Mexican life are found in all of Byron's work. Byron is an individual, original, and visually satisfying artist. He is indebted to Mexican mural painting, to 20th-century Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an art including expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 and fauvism
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...

, and to the intense social passions of the Mexican people.

Byron's works contain humor and satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 based on his Indian
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 and Spanish heritage
Spanish colonization of the Americas
Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...

. Byron is a colorist
Colorist
In comics, a colorist is responsible for adding color to black-and-white line art. For most of the 20th century this was done using brushes and dyes which were then used as guides to produce the printing plates...

. He dislikes using great amounts of color but rather emphasizes harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 of a single color. This creates a luminescence
Luminescence
Luminescence is emission of light by a substance not resulting from heat; it is thus a form of cold body radiation. It can be caused by chemical reactions, electrical energy, subatomic motions, or stress on a crystal. This distinguishes luminescence from incandescence, which is light emitted by a...

 and vibrancy in his work.

Since Byron is first and foremost a sculptor, he paints like a sculptor. Byron's works are both contemporary and traditional.Two of Byron's contemporary Art school friends were famed Javier Arevalo
Javier Arevalo
Javier Arevalo is a Mexican artist.-Early life:Arevalo was born on 29 April 1937 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. His passion for art emerged in 1950 when he drew cover illustrations for textbooks for the medical school of the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. In 1951 he won first place in a...

 and Ayako Tsuru
Ayako Tsuru
Ayako Tsuru is a contemporary artist from Mexico City.She studied at the National school of fine Arts from 1959 to 1963, before moving on to the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts of Salzburg, Austria in 1968, and the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto from 1970 to 1971.-Early...

.
He will be missed as one of the great ones in the modern age of Art.

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