Daniel Galvez

Daniel Galvez (born 1953) is an artist, muralist, and painter currently living in Oakland. He was born in Calexico and raised in Sacramento. He studied at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, and completed his BFA at the California College of the Arts. He also earned an ​​MA in painting from San Francisco State University. Through his schooling, he found inspiration from photorealism and “Los Tres Grandes” (José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera). He worked on the murals People's History of Telegraph Avenue (1976) and Winds of Change (1977), in Berkeley, and completed his first mural Viva la Raza (1977), also in Berkeley, and then Oakland’s Portrait (1981) in Oakland. In 1982, Galvez participated in the exhibition Progress in Process at Galería de la Raza with artists including Ray Patlán, Michael Ríos, Patricia Rodriguez, Spain Rodríguez, Yolanda López, and Miranda Bergman, among others. In 1983, Galvez created the Carnaval mural in San Francisco, one of his most beloved and recognized murals. In 1985, his Grand Performance mural in Oakland received City Landmark Status. In 1993 he received the Eureka Fellowship in Painting. Galvez collaborates with Joan Galvez, his wife, a business research librarian, by researching and developing several aspects of his mural making practice. In 2019, he was invited to create a series of murals for the Washington Supreme Court building in Olympia. In his murals Galvez strives to represent communities and real people living in them. During the oral history conducted for Proyecto Mission Murals, he reflected on the way he collaborates with the communities that have commissioned his work, incorporating their values and goals into the murals, and understanding that “if it's done well, it's because I listened.”

Camilo Garzón