ALFONSO GALVÁN
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Alfonso Galván (Madrid, 1945) is a highly individual artist, creator of a world that bears the hallmark of a combination of exacting commitment, of a complete grasp of the matter he wishes to convey, of a control over the way he tells it and of an overflowing imagination. A remembered image or a memory catapult his creative process into active mode where time comes to a standstill, for the image grows very slowly, isolated from outer rhythms. The purpose of the painting is not to depict a scene for viewers, but rather to reveal the landscape, its history, memory and echoes.
The content of his early work was strongly social, and this was superseded later by oneiric-style images, containing a mixture of cultural allusions, symbols, games. Everything is happening and interweaving. Galván paints without preliminary sketches: he enters the canvas or paper with a desire to inhabit it and to leave signs of what has taken place, and often he even goes as far as to make almost unending paintings, whose multiplying panels bestows them with a narrative, even circular, path-like, aspect. It is worth stopping at each painting and approaching them in the manner they were painted, in the certainty that we will discover playful allusions, games, questions and microcosms.
The show, which has no strict chronological basis, creates two atmospheres: one of them predominated by animals in dense, closed, strongly fictional, scenes, using family documents and photographs taken in Africa in the 1950s as their point of departure; the other, in appearance more lyrical, has open landscapes and orientalist allusions that include texts in Chinese, particularly from the “Daodejing”, which Alfonso Galván translated and illustrated. Both sections serve to consider and come to understand an approach in which the process of painting sets its own development and end results.
Alfonso Galván does not seek to reproduce reality nor to work by confronting it, however he does need to control and to soak up the things that concern him. For this reason, despite painting in a closed studio, without preparatory sketches, he lives in nature, and when he feels strongly attracted to Chinese culture, he learns the language and adds symbols from it into his paintings. Similar choices have led him to paint a mural using thin layers of ink and pencil, an endeavour that has taken almost 10 years.
An artist who is often overlooked when it comes to accounts surveying Spanish painting, despite bursting into the art scene in the mid 1970s with an oeuvre quite unlike that of his own generation and its forerunner and being featured in many collections, such as the one belonging to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
Miguel Fernández-Cid, director of MARCO and curator of the exhibition
Documentation
Due to this exhibition, the Library-Documentation Centre of MARCO has prepared a documental dossier, with links to articles and complementary information about the artist, accessible for consultations on the MARCO website www.marcovigo.com in the Exhibitions/Present and Library/News sections.
Schools Program
In collaboration with “la Caixa” Foundation
From April 11, 2025
Times: 10.00 to 11.30 and 11.30 to 13.00 Tuesdays to Fridays
Reservations: tel. +34 986 113900 Ext. 200 / 986 113900 Ext. 308 / Email: comunicacion@marcovigo.com
Visits and workshops addressed to NGOs and CBOs
In collaboration with “la Caixa” Foundation
From April 11, 2025
Times: ‘À la carte’, adapted to each group’s needs
Reservations: tel. +34 986 113900 Ext. 200 / 986 113900 Ext. 308 / Email: comunicacion@marcovigo.com
Children’s Workshops
In collaboration with “la Caixa” Foundation
From April 12, 2025
Times: 11.00 to 12.30 on Saturdays (3 to 6 years) and from 12.30 to 14.00 (7 to 12 years)
Reservations: tel. +34 986 113900 Ext. 200 / Email: recepcion@marcovigo.com
Information and guided tours
Gallery staff are available for queries and information about the exhibition, additionally tours are available: every day at 18.00. ‘À la carte’ visits for groups, for reservations please call: Tel. +34 986 113900 / +34 986 113908
Interactive maps via Vigo app
The interactive maps system accessible on the Vigo app allows visitors to consult exhibition-related content (videos, pictures, information about the pieces on show), either via beacons or Bluetooth devices located inside the museum spaces or anywhere else via the map on your mobile phone’s screen after downloading the app, or on the Concello de Vigo website.
Photo 1: Alfonso Galván. Tótem, 1991 (detail)
Photo 2 : Alfonso Galván. Cebra, 1990 (detail)
Artists
Alfonso Galván
Alfonso Galván (Madrid, 1945) trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and made his first solo exhibition in Madrid in 1973. As an artist, he is difficult to classify. His work fuses peculiar personal symbolism and a vision of a transcended reality, imagined, through a slow process based in observation, where the artist seeks the essence of things. Through his painting, he invites the spectator to reflect on the world around us and on the human condition.
He belongs to the generation of artists born in the 40s that started to have their first artistic success around 1970. Being influenced by North American hyperrealism, fantastic realism, photographic realism, or pop art, many received direct lessons from Antonio López when he was a professor in the Fine Arts Academy of San Fernando. They were called Nuevos Realistas [New Realists].
In 1987, the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid contained an ample sample of his oeuvre from the 70s, that subsequently was shown in Espacio Caja Burgos and the Sala Luzán Galleries in Zaragoza. His solo exhibitions in the last decades include Paraíso quebrado [Fractured Paradise], Church of el Carmen, in the town of Arjona, Jaén (2019); VanderLinde Foundation, in the town of Montánchez, Cáceres (2019); Santander’s Arts Fair, Espiral Gallery, Santander (2019); Vuelapluma Gallery, Madrid (2017); Sociedad Anónima Gallery, Madrid (2014); Trueno Gallery, in the town of Colmenar Viejo, Madrid (2006); Muelle 27 and Tercer Espacio Galleries, Madrid (2004).
He has taken part in collective exhibitions in institutions, museums and galleries, like Realismo en España [Realism in Spain], Valentín de Madariaga y Oya Foundation, Sevilla (2022); Herbarios Imaginados: Entre el arte y la ciencia [Imagined herbariums: Between arts and science], Complutense Art Center, Madrid (2020); Pintura [Painting], ABM Confecciones, in the town of Vallecas, Madrid (2018); Mons Dei, Las Edades del Hombre [The Ages of Men], in the town of Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia (2018); Erotismo y fetichismo [Erotism and fetishism], VanderLinde Foundation, in the town of Montánchez, Cáceres (2017); Animalista [Animal activist], in the cultural center La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2016); Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo [International Fair of Contemporary Art], Ansorena Gallery, Miami (2016); 30º Aniversario [30th Anniversary], Ansorena Gallery, Madrid (2016); Realismo en España: 50 años [Realism in Spain: 50 years], Adolfo Suárez Cultural Center, in the town of Tres Cantos, Madrid (2016); Secuencias de realidad [Sequences of Reality], Kiosco Alfonso Gallery, A Coruña (2016); Interpretación/Representación [Interpretation/Representation], Sociedad Anónima Gallery, Madrid (2015); Secuencias de realidad [Sequences of Reality], MEIAC Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art, Badajoz (2015); Rosebud, Vuelapluma Gallery, Madrid (2015); Retrato y Literatura [Portrait and Literature], National Library, Madrid (2015); (Re) visiones de la naturaleza [(Re) visions of Nature], Sociedad Anónima Gallery, Madrid (2015).
Among the awards and honors obtained, we find: mention on the first Adaja Contest of the Ávila Foundation (1974), 1st Prize on the second Adaja Contest (1975), Scholarship Juan March Foundation (1975), Scholarship Adquisición de obra [Acquisition of work], Ministry of Culture (1982), Scholarship Realización de obra [Execution of work], Ministry of Culture (1983), 1st Prize on the first Bienal de Albacete Contest (1986). His oeuvres can be found in private and public collections, like the ones in Museo Reina Sofía, Ávila Foundation, Albacete City Hall, Exeter College of Oxford, Autonomous Region of Madrid, National Library, General Mediterránea Foundation, and Arte y Naturaleza Collection.
+INFO about his oeuvre, projects and complementary documentation in https://alfonsogalvan.es/
Texts about his oeuvres https://alfonsogalvan.es/textos/
Daodejing [The Book of the Tao] https://alfonsogalvan.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/TAO-TE-KING-LIBRO-WEB.pdf
Alfonso Galván’s exhibition in Fundación VanderLinde (2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybo8P9Ko5SE
Artist's text
“I never paint from life. I invent the place. Precisely because they are invented, the descriptions are very precise. If I have to paint a person or an animal, I sometimes use a photograph or some notes. I can paint by heart because I have observed nature a lot. I have learned a connection with the landscape: visual, olfactory, and tactile. Chinese landscape painters, they never paint from life: they say, for example, that to paint bamboo must come from inside your chest. I observe living processes. I try to get to the essence of things, to reflect life’s manifestations. When I paint a tree, I never copy it. But I have planted many trees, I have seen them grow. I know where the branches will grow on the trees I create, though sometimes they cannot be identified with an actual species.
I also invent the plot, which is always impossible. The paradox lies in the contradiction between the precision of the form and the ambiguity of what is represented. Not even I know what my paintings mean. They are images, lies that resemble truths. Art is an artifice, a falsehood. My intention is to provoke unexpected emotions in the viewer.”
Alfonso Galván, 1997
