Biography

Salvador Díaz is a visual artist whose work in contemporary painting explores written language and collective memory. His artistic practice reflects critically on the role of media and language in shaping historical and emotional narratives. Through interventions on newspapers, he repositions the press as both a conceptual and compositional support, transforming its content into layers of painterly meaning.

His ongoing series, including Family Album and Panoramics, addresses collective memory, personal history, and immersive spatial experiences. These works propose new ways to reflect on the fragility of remembrance, the effects of disaster and trauma, and the construction of identity through everyday images.

Díaz’s press-paintings sustain the permanence of information, offering the possibility of revisiting events both punctually and timelessly. They measure the pulse of society through its own media, creating a dialogue between painting and journalism. This process offers space for a visual voice to emerge—a voice that reveals the fractures, omissions, and distortions within dominant systems of power. By working through fragments, wounds, and unspoken desires, Díaz articulates a visual counter-narrative that challenges exclusion and speaks from within the complexity of the contemporary world.

Díaz is currently a Professor at the University of Monterrey UDEM. And member of the National System of Art Creators  2022-2025 FONCA in Mexico. He did a small-stay residency and solo exhibition at the Gallery of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Acquisition award at the Tijuana International Triennial CECUT 2021.

During the 2020 Pandemic, he develops the project "Storytelling MARCO" for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey due to the closure of the museum in the month of March 2020, this platform invited prominent artists to tell their story with the museum.

In 2014 he is recognized in Mexico as a Member of the National System of Art Creators, has taught jury, workshops and conferences at the Institutes of Culture of the cities of Monterrey, Tijuana, Chetumal, Villahermosa, Tecate, Merida, Campeche and Acapulco He was a Vocal of Plastic Arts in the Council for Culture and Arts of Nuevo León and has maintained throughout his career a social commitment to benefit various social institutions.

Bachelor in Philosophy and Humanities by the UANL and Master of Arts in the Postgraduate Faculty of Visual Arts of the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon. 2014 UANL Arts Prize, State Tax Stimulus Law for Artistic Creation, selected at the 2000 FEMSA Biennial.

His exhibitions in Monterrey city "Events" and "Profiles and Stories. "The Emperor's New Costume" at the Fernando Pradilla Gallery in Madrid. "The Prince" MAS Museum of Santander.

"Press Art: Sammlung Annette und Peter Nobel" at the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen in Switzerland and at the Museum der Moderne: MdM Rupertinum Salzburg in Austria. "The Future of the Present" in the Galician Center of Contemporary Art CGAC of Santiago de Compostela.

With the invitation of the French artist Colonel (Thierry Geoffroy) Salvador Díaz participated in his project "Emergency Room" on PS1 MoMa in Long Island, NY.

In 2011 his work is included in the November Auction of Latin American Art of the Phillips de Pury House, New York.

Diaz was represented by the following Contemporary Art Galleries in the following years:

Plastic Association of the Northeast, Mty 1993-1995

Martha Flores, Mty. 1995

Frida Gallery, Mty. 1995

Villa Amadeus, Mty 1996-1997

Arte Actual Mexicano, Mty. 1997-2010

Mackey Gallery, Houston 2000-2006

5 Pieces Gallery, Switzerland 2010

Brown Bag Contemporary, San Francisco-NY 2004-2010

Stephen Cohen, Los Angeles 2006

Fernando Pradilla, Madrid 2001-2020

Galeria El Museo, Bogota 2002-2020

Stephanie Ferrario, London 2006

Wedel Gallery, London 2006

Over the last two decades his work has been exhibited at the International Art Fairs of Contemporary Art FIAC in Paris, Art Chicago, Art Cologne Germany, ARCO Madrid, Art Miami, Pinta NY and Scope NY, Basel, Hamptons, and London. Zona MACO, SP-Arte, Arte BA and ArtBO in South America among others.

His work is part of private collections in 29 cities around the world between America and Europe. The CGAC museums in Santiago de Compostela and MAS Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Santander and Cantabria, in Spain; Pinacoteca de Nuevo León and La Casa Universitaria del Libro UANL, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in Mexico.

Salvador Díaz lives and works in Monterrey.