The Surrealism Website
Gabriela Garza Padilla (1965-)


Gabriela Garza Padilla was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, an industrialized city in Northern Mexico. At the age of 14 she began to paint as a hobby. When she finished high school specializing in Math and Physics, she decided that her path was to be a professional artist and wanted to move to Mexico City to study for a Bachelor's Degree in Arts at the Academia de San Carlos.
Unfortunately she was forbidden to do this by her strict family, and she studied at the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores in Monterrey, where she obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Mass Communication and Journalism.
She worked for four years in the corporate world of Monterrey until she quit her job in 1989 at the age of 24, and established her first studio. Since then she has had 18 solo shows and more than 30 group shows in Mexico, The United States, Canada, Central America and the Caribbean, France, Spain, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Japan.
Her work is featured in some of the most renowned books of Fantastic and Magical Realism worldwide. Her paintings are now in private and corporate collections worldwide. Her love for mysticism, mythology and the masters of the Italian Renaissance, mixed with her American, French and Sephardic roots, gave birth to her deep view of life, with its constant change and regeneration, that she portrays in her paintings.