This is an old post of the late Julio Galan.
Miguel
From The Guardian:
Julio Galán
Painter whose magic realism drew on folk images and pop art
Phil Davison
Thursday August 31, 2006
Guardian
Julio Galán, who has died aged 47 of a brain
haemorrhage, was one of Latin America's
best-known contemporary artists, first brought to
international notice by Andy Warhol and strongly
influenced by the grotesque imagery of Francis
Bacon and the homoerotic photographs of Robert
Mapplethorpe. Often dubbed el niño terrible (the
enfant terrible) of Mexican art, he was seen as a
trailblazer by gay artists throughout conservatively-Catholic Latin America.
Galán's neo-expressionist style was often
compared with that of his earlier compatriot,
Frida Kahlo, but apart from conceding their
shared narcissism, he preferred to be labelled a
"magic realist" than a surrealist or
"neo-Mexicanist". Most of his work, blending
Mexican folk imagery with pop art elements,
reflected the pain of growing up a closet
homosexual in the macho Mexico of the 1960s and
70s. In his early work, he disguised the tortured
homosexuality of his inspiration by using
distressed, sensual images of children, animals,
saints, flowers, fruit or other symbols that
hinted at but protected his painful secret.
It was after Galán moved to New York city in
1984, at the age of 26, that Warhol spotted his
work and printed some of his paintings in his
magazine Interview, a breakthrough that sucked
the young Mexican into Warhol's East Village pop
art scene. Having lived firmly in the closet in
Mexico, his eyes were opened by the overt
homosexuality of Manhattan, despite the newly
publicised phenomenon of HIV/Aids.
By then, Mapplethorpe's controversial homoerotic
images were widely known, and inspired Galán to
"deal with my vehement sexuality" openly in
canvasses depicting homosexuality and
sado-masochism. His kitschy, camp work - often,
like Mapplethorpe's, using faces and figures cut
out from magazines - reflected the times, and he
was given his first US exhibition at New York's Art Mart gallery in 1985.
During a 1988 exhibition at the Boymans-van
Beuningen museum in Rotterdam, one critic wrote
that his work "stood up surprisingly well" to
those of Salvador Dalí on permanent display,
including Dalí's famous Shirley Temple, the
Youngest Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939).
In the words of New York Times critic Michael
Brenson, writing in 1990: "Julio Galán is a
clever provocateur who as a painter is a bit of a
lion tamer, a bit of a high-wire performer and a
bit of a wistful, but defiant clown." When an
apparent self-portrait by Galán, titled China
Poblana (1987), was chosen as the only Mexican
work at the multi-cultural exhibition Magiciens
de la Terre in the Pompidou Centre in Paris in
1989, he was thrust into international stardom in
the contemporary art world. The painting showed a
figure resembling Galán wearing a China Poblana,
a traditional Mexican woman's folk dress named
after a historic servant-slave, a Chinawoman from
the town of Pueblo. In 1993, his large work, Sí y
No (Yes and No, 1990), was given pride of place
at the entrance to New York's Museum of Modern
Art, leading visitors into the huge, 300-work,
25-gallery exhibition, Latin American Artists of the 20th Century.
Julio Galán was born in the mining town of
Múzquiz in the Mexican state of Coahuila, brought
up somewhat cosseted on his grandfather's mining
estate and educated in private schools. His early
works were inspired by the dolls, toy soldiers
and other exotic artefacts his grandfather had
brought back from foreign trips.
After his liberating move to New York City in
1984, his first painting was Paseo Por Nueva York
Con Dolor de Cabeza y Barajas de la Loteria (A
Walk Through New York With a Headache and Lottery
Tickets, 1984) depicting a giant figure that
looks like a Manhattan hotel bellhop, towering
over the city's skyscrapers carrying a Sacred
Heart, the whole painting bordered by subways and
other city images. In his later years, both in
New York and after returning to work in
Monterrey, Galán increasingly added
post-modernist physical trimmings to the
labyrinths on his canvasses, sticking on ribbons,
dried flowers, plastic fruit, beads, feathers or pieces of jewellery.
He also became known for defacing his paintings
with his own graffiti, scribbling abstract
citations such as "I want to die", or "I bite
myself but I don't eat myself", or "I'm addicted to myself."
In an interview for an exhibition catalogue,
Galán was once asked: "Are you in love with
yourself?" "Sure," he replied. "This is what I
paint, this love of me. Once, I took it so far as
to make love to myself. Before going to sleep, I
had put one of my pictures between my bed and the
wall close to my bed. Suddenly I woke up, and the
emotion was so strong that I grabbed the
painting, put it on top of me and made love with it."
He is survived by two brothers and two sisters.
· Julio Galán, artist, born December 5 1958; died August 4 2006.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Miguel Juarez, Assistant Professor
Librarian/Curator of Hispanic/Latino Studies Collections
Cushing Memorial Library & Archives
Sterling C. Evans Memorial Library
Texas A&M University
MS5000 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-5000
Voice (979) 845-1951
FAX (979) 845-1441
College Station, TX 77843-5000
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