The faces and the bright colorfields in the paintings of Alberto Galvez’s new exhibition, La Coleccionista, are a result of the artist’s passion for the painters of the western art historical canon, mostly from the Renaissance. In this series Galvez’s figures have contemporary hairstyles and necklines, but they borrow the gaze and presence of women in old master paintings to become larger-than-life contemporary counterparts of classical muses. Galvez seems to have adopted not just the features and gestures from the queens and madonnas of Renaissance paintings, but also something of their essential nature. His paintings also borrow colors from the original masterworks, colors taken directly from the portraits Galvez is inspired by; the carmine of a Bronzino dress, for example, or the ultramarine of the robe of Giotto’s Mary may expand and fill the entire background of a painting.

Born in Orihuela in 1963, Alberto Gálvez is a tenured Professor of Painting at the prestigious School of Fine Arts of Valencia, Spain.