Byron Gálvez was born in 1941 in Mixquiahuala, State of Hidalgo, and since very young displayed his artistic yearnings. His father, who was a merchant and farmer, was a enthusiast of literature and, also, played the violin in a local jazz band. It is in this manner that the painter naturally grew in an environment tied to culture.

At 16 he decided to move to Mexico City, with a central objective: to study art at the Academy of San Carlos. It was there, between 1958 and 1962 where he studied and had as teachers, among others, the Spanish painter Antonio Rodriguez Luna, etching master Francisco Moreno Capdevila, Luis Nishizawa, Santos Balmori and Antonio Ramirez. He was shaped, as can be seen, with a generation of first rate teachers, and this motivated him to follow his vocation as a plastic artist steadily and tenaciously.

Between 1962 and 1964 he pursued post-graduate studies, specializing in painting. At the same time he was a founding member of the workshop of metal sculpture of the National School of Visual Arts of the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

In 1964 he assembled his first individual exhibit and since then has had over 60 in different venues in Mexico and various cities in the United States, Europe and Latin-America. His work has also been part of innumerable collective exhibits. A singular moment occurred when, being very young, the famous American actor Vincent Price bought every work of his first individual exhibit. In order for the show to go on, the artist showed his amazing creative capacity and in a week created 45 new pieces. Astounded at Byron Gálvez's work, Price called him a “Mexican Picasso”. Since then he has been presented with over 15 awards and honorary tributes recognizing his vast and diverse work.

Throughout his intense career as a plastic artist he participated in special programs filmed for the Office of Radio, Television and Cinematography. Traveling many times to the European continent and visiting the most important museums of the old world has been instrumental in the development of Byron Gálvez's plastic schooling, he considers this activity an unavoidable formative experience it the growth of an artist.

Since 1995 he is a member of the National Art and Culture Council of the State of Hidalgo, having been appointed by the governor of the state.

His plastic work, which includes sculpture, etching, lithography, sketching and painting, is part of important private collections in Mexico and abroad.

Among those who have written about his work we include Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna, Alejandro Aura, Berta Taracena, Santos Balmori, Pablo Fernandez Marquez, Enrique F. Gual and Margarita Nelken. 

 Acrylography
 
The works of graphic nature worked on by Byron Gálvez he has called acrylography. Having as a foundation the same principles of all graphic work, Byron Gálvez has discovered a new lode that he has named thus. This process shows some similarity to Rufino Tamayo’s mixiographic work.

Rufino Tamayo worked on mixiography in wax plates upon which the Oaxacan artist engraved, drew on and created unusual textures, using a wide palette, akin to the prehispanic semantics and the language that had been imposed for many years the universe of contemporary art. The density of these textures allowed Tamayo to construct from these pieces matrices that were later turned to metal, smelted by the technique of “lost wax”. That is to say, the plate is created, it is poured under enormous pressure and a copy of the work is obtained. However, in the making of mixiography, all the tonal differences are solved in one plate.

When Byron Gálvez enters acrylography, he creates a specific plate for each of the colors in his graphic. Part of the realization involves a lithograph as a ordering plate, black, given that acrylography is a mixed technique that starts as a drawing on stone. Over the lithograph, he prints each color, and as a final process he introduces a plate that contains the coarser textures, otherwise when putting it on the press the texture would become flat and loose it’s contusive sense.

The fact is that in his acrylographs, Byron Gálvez also shows an immense three dimensional capability and a great luminosity in color, something which is hard to obtain and he manages it precisely because he uses one plate for each color. Therefore the colors do not smudge or sully when printing.

Acrylography is a technique that consists of using a number of acrylic plates that contain textures created with resins, powdered marble or coal that give consistency to the texture. This technique has the great advantage that as the artist is working each plate he can enrich tones and textures at the moment of printing

In addition to Acrylography, Byron’s graphic work includes etching, dry point, smooth varnish, aquatint and other techniques. All of them are different ways of incising the metal with acids. A great part of the mystery of the etching is the fact that the artist is working in negative, to put it in photography terms. This means that in the metal, everything that will be white upon printing is black and everything that will be black is white. The dexterity and the mastering in this confine can really be seen once the artist enters the universe of the half tone.