Luis Gal Mexican, b. 1957

Luis Gal was born and raised in Mexico City, and received his artistic training in France. He now lives and works in Mexico City. The artist learned the painting technique of encaustic during his time in France. This very old technique uses cold wax mixed with pigment, and was popularized in the Renaissance. Not many artists today use this medium, but Luis Gal has found a way to make it relevant to the quality and texture of his Mexican landscapes. 

Gal provides an interesting take on landscape because he avoids the typically saturated, tropical Latin American colors. Instead, he is more interested in the sophisticated play of light, but not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that matters in art: light in the artist’s mind. His colors translate the essence of things, the landscapes and the beings he loves, while at the same time attesting to his emotions,an exercise in artfully disguised melancholy. His paintings are quiet, slow, deliberate and poetic.

Gal takes us on a journey through a new side of Mexico with the soft and dreamlike environments that he creates.The artist occupies himself with a subject matter that is at the same time alive and vulnerable; he celebrates forms but he also records the corrosive passage of the hours. ” – Juan Villoro.

Luis Gal’s work has been included in several exhibits and is part of the permanent art collection in North and Central America. These include: The US Department of State Art in Embassies,  Metropolitan Autonomous University, Mexico City; Museum of Natural History, Mexico City; The University of Texas at San Antonio, and The French-Latin American Institute, Mexico City, among others.