César Galicia

Spanish painter César Galicia has been represented in the United States by Forum Gallery since 1994. Renowned for his “greater than life or more than real paintings,” César Galicia has been referred to as a “sensation of contemporary trompe L’oeil.”  Galicia does not paint reality directly, but instead channels his efforts to reconstructing the appearance of things. Drawing on experiences he had during his years in New York as well as life in his native Spain, Galicia has developed an urban mysticism in which beauty explodes on each graffiti-covered wall and in every corner of a gritty, uncompromising city.

Galicia does not make use of photography. For his paintings, he focuses on traditional study of “things natural,” in which he paints his work from the inside to the outside. In effect, Galicia begins with painting a dimensional understudy covered up in the final work. This pictorial construction of subject and volume gives substance, depth, and solidity to his imagery. The effect on the viewer and the surprise of a visual reality in paint is pure César Galicia virtuosity. Galicia has taken the craft of painting to its limits – in which oil painting has become fantastic and nearly real.

Works by César Galicia can be found in public collections that include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), and the National Museums of Spain and Mexico, along with private collections in Japan, Spain, Mexico, Switzerland and the United States.