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Lot Essay
Through the layering of concept and image in a puzzle-like fashion, time and again Julio Galán revised his approach to portraiture, while consistently merging aspects of self with his subject. Of importance to Galán was his simultaneous weighing of the sacred and the profane; thus, he created complex narrative in his painting, as exemplified by Si tu te vas, yo me quedo hasta el final, which he imbued with the at once iconic, and personal.
A young, smooth, pale-skinned face in the likeness of the artist, head receptively tilted gazes back at the viewer. She is both Madonna and Spanish maja. Standing full-length and center-stage, the Marian figure presses her hand against an inverted crucifix, middle and index-fingers crossed in a gesture of hope, desire, and expectation. Even as Galán invokes Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe with dramatic, blooming roses, he joins the sacrosanct and the secular by wrapping the supple body in a shawl reminiscent of the intricately embroidered silk mantón de Manila, an essential garment of the Spanish flamenco dancer. Her role as maja, the popular urban woman of Spain, is further indicated by the lightweight, white, lace mantilla, a symbol of Spanish femininity and nationality traditionally worn by Spanish women across social classes both to everyday events, as well as to Catholic mass (Tara Zanardi, “Crafting Spanish Female Identity: Silk Lace Mantillas at the Crossroads of Tradition and Fashion,” Material Culture Review 77 [January 2013]: 139-157). Draped over a high peineta (comb), the mantilla frames her face, falling over her shoulders and hanging down her back. The tears that flow from her eyes could commonly be read as an expression of love, loss, or longing—a mother’s suffering for her martyred son, or simply the body’s emotional response to pain or beauty. Floating across the canvas surface, the text “Si tu te fuiste (vas), yo me quedo hasta el final” (“If you left (go), I will remain until the end”) simultaneously proclaims presence and absence; these lyrics, which Galán extracted from the mournful song Yo me quedo en Sevilla by Los Jovenes Flamencos (Teresa Gómez, interview by author, January 22, 2023), poetically suggest all variety of separation and its opposite. The artist leads the viewer through abandonment, a break-up, and death, to loyalty, friendship, family, romance, and survival. Galán’s portrait conjures such broad sentiments while honoring a personal relationship.
“Why do you cry so much?” Galán asked his friend Teresa Gómez, who posed for Si tu te vas, yo me quedo hasta el final. “My soul grows to the point that it escapes through my eyes,” she explained to him (Gómez, interview). Elizabeth Galán, the artist’s sister identified Gómez as the model for this portrait, noting as significant the painting’s contemporaneity with other of Galán’s artworks inspired by women close to him including Catalina Macias in Blue Blue, his cousin Golondrina in Rondine amorosa, Milena Flores in Siempre insieme, his younger sister Sofia in Silenzio, and herself in Hungry Proof, all included in his 1996 solo exhibition with Annina Nosei (Elizabeth Galán, personal correspondence with the author, January 19, 2023). Gómez relates that she and Galán first met around 1994 when they were both in their 30s, at the Mesón del Gallo, a gathering place for musicians, dancers, and artists in the Barrio Antiguo near the Chipinque mountain, where his apartment/studio was located (Gómez, interview). Recalling their friendship as a loving and affectionate one, the passionate, effusive, and talented singer and flamenco dancer Gómez would teach Galán to dance; he in turn, would do her make-up.
With a loaded brush Galán has traced the flamenco dancer’s movements as a blue swirl that spirals around her body, while black splotches mark limbatic, or in-between, blank spaces in his memory (Gómez, interview). Gómez reveals that as Galán worked on her painting, he was puzzled as to what to place in her hands. Seated together at the restaurant Mesón del Olivo, Galán exclaimed, “¡Ya sé lo que voy a hacer!” (I know what I am going to do). With the form of the crucifix Galán has memorialized the dancer’s father, Captain Guillermo Gómez, who tragically died in a plane crash when the small Cessna he was flying suffered mechanical failure exploding against the Cerro de la Silla, Monterrey’s notable landmark; blue rings around Galán’s cross/airplane, indicate its downward tailspin (Gómez, interview). Today, when she performs at venues like Monterrey’s La Chunga and sings Yo me quedo en Sevilla, it is to Galán who she dedicates the song that he “obsessively, some 8,997 times” requested she sing to him (Gómez, interview).
Teresa Eckmann, Associate Professor of Contemporary Latin American Art History, University of Texas at San Antonio
A young, smooth, pale-skinned face in the likeness of the artist, head receptively tilted gazes back at the viewer. She is both Madonna and Spanish maja. Standing full-length and center-stage, the Marian figure presses her hand against an inverted crucifix, middle and index-fingers crossed in a gesture of hope, desire, and expectation. Even as Galán invokes Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe with dramatic, blooming roses, he joins the sacrosanct and the secular by wrapping the supple body in a shawl reminiscent of the intricately embroidered silk mantón de Manila, an essential garment of the Spanish flamenco dancer. Her role as maja, the popular urban woman of Spain, is further indicated by the lightweight, white, lace mantilla, a symbol of Spanish femininity and nationality traditionally worn by Spanish women across social classes both to everyday events, as well as to Catholic mass (Tara Zanardi, “Crafting Spanish Female Identity: Silk Lace Mantillas at the Crossroads of Tradition and Fashion,” Material Culture Review 77 [January 2013]: 139-157). Draped over a high peineta (comb), the mantilla frames her face, falling over her shoulders and hanging down her back. The tears that flow from her eyes could commonly be read as an expression of love, loss, or longing—a mother’s suffering for her martyred son, or simply the body’s emotional response to pain or beauty. Floating across the canvas surface, the text “Si tu te fuiste (vas), yo me quedo hasta el final” (“If you left (go), I will remain until the end”) simultaneously proclaims presence and absence; these lyrics, which Galán extracted from the mournful song Yo me quedo en Sevilla by Los Jovenes Flamencos (Teresa Gómez, interview by author, January 22, 2023), poetically suggest all variety of separation and its opposite. The artist leads the viewer through abandonment, a break-up, and death, to loyalty, friendship, family, romance, and survival. Galán’s portrait conjures such broad sentiments while honoring a personal relationship.
“Why do you cry so much?” Galán asked his friend Teresa Gómez, who posed for Si tu te vas, yo me quedo hasta el final. “My soul grows to the point that it escapes through my eyes,” she explained to him (Gómez, interview). Elizabeth Galán, the artist’s sister identified Gómez as the model for this portrait, noting as significant the painting’s contemporaneity with other of Galán’s artworks inspired by women close to him including Catalina Macias in Blue Blue, his cousin Golondrina in Rondine amorosa, Milena Flores in Siempre insieme, his younger sister Sofia in Silenzio, and herself in Hungry Proof, all included in his 1996 solo exhibition with Annina Nosei (Elizabeth Galán, personal correspondence with the author, January 19, 2023). Gómez relates that she and Galán first met around 1994 when they were both in their 30s, at the Mesón del Gallo, a gathering place for musicians, dancers, and artists in the Barrio Antiguo near the Chipinque mountain, where his apartment/studio was located (Gómez, interview). Recalling their friendship as a loving and affectionate one, the passionate, effusive, and talented singer and flamenco dancer Gómez would teach Galán to dance; he in turn, would do her make-up.
With a loaded brush Galán has traced the flamenco dancer’s movements as a blue swirl that spirals around her body, while black splotches mark limbatic, or in-between, blank spaces in his memory (Gómez, interview). Gómez reveals that as Galán worked on her painting, he was puzzled as to what to place in her hands. Seated together at the restaurant Mesón del Olivo, Galán exclaimed, “¡Ya sé lo que voy a hacer!” (I know what I am going to do). With the form of the crucifix Galán has memorialized the dancer’s father, Captain Guillermo Gómez, who tragically died in a plane crash when the small Cessna he was flying suffered mechanical failure exploding against the Cerro de la Silla, Monterrey’s notable landmark; blue rings around Galán’s cross/airplane, indicate its downward tailspin (Gómez, interview). Today, when she performs at venues like Monterrey’s La Chunga and sings Yo me quedo en Sevilla, it is to Galán who she dedicates the song that he “obsessively, some 8,997 times” requested she sing to him (Gómez, interview).
Teresa Eckmann, Associate Professor of Contemporary Latin American Art History, University of Texas at San Antonio