She says she is devoted to her family and only paints when she has time. The teacher Gloria Banda (Saltillo, 1940) opens the door of her home on an April morning. She has her workshop busy with her, so she works on projects at a table she has set up in the kitchen. There she can see tubes of paint, brushes and some sketches that she will propose to participate in a collective exhibition to be held in Madrid, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death.
The painter leaves the walker that helps her walk and takes a seat, then points to two volumes of the Biographical Dictionary of Coahuila. She indicates that her father, José Galindo Ramos, a gas station businessman, appears in that book, but she also appears. Her career records more than 115 individual and 70 collective exhibitions, as well as prizes and recognitions such as the Firenze Prize bronze medal that she obtained in Florence.
She is an educator and passionate about mathematics. She did her studies at the Benemérita Normal School in Saltillo and, as a primary school teacher, she herself prepared her work material. She always liked to paint and share her knowledge of visual education with children, she says that maybe that allowed her to become an artist.
“Painting is present in me. I get married, I stop working and accompany my husband to specialize and everything. About seven years passed. We arrived here in Torreón in 1968 and I saw the walls of the house very bald. This is my first painting (he points to a painting that shows a port and a group of boats), because I didn’t know how to paint. I did it precisely to put it in my living room, because I saw the walls as very bare”.
La Laguna also allowed him to forge a close friendship with Ernestina Gamboa, founder of the Casa de la Cultura de Gómez Palacio. She took courses at that venue and later on she was invited to give classes on art history. By way of a conference, Gloria Banda spoke about artists such as Pablo Picasso or André Breton, in periods from prehistory to contemporary art. At the beginning of the 1970s, she decided to gather her notes and publish the book Panorama cultural, with the help of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) Campus Laguna.
“As I told you, she was a close friend of Tina Gamboa. And with that vision that she had, she organized a national contest. Notice! What a fan! Nationwide and in Gomez! No one knew where Gomez was. It was a painting, engraving and drawing contest. It turns out that she summoned a luxury jury with Berta Taracena, who was one of the best art critics, and Manuel Felguérez ”.
A few days after closing the call, the small number of proposals made Ernestina Gamboa nervous. The cultural promoter convinced Gloria Banda to register works of her authorship. Such was her surprise, the Coahuila artist won the contest in the Engraving category with the work Restless, the cicadas and crickets start her concert, and in the other two she obtained honorable mentions.
“As a result of that contest, they invited me to the juries’ room and they told me: ‘Don’t you dedicate yourself to the plastic arts?’ The same question that you are asking me. I said: ‘No, well no. I am dedicated to my family’. I remember a lot that the teacher Felguérez told me: ‘Teacher, but you should dedicate yourself to the plastic arts because you have talent’. Oh, that thing seemed very pretentious to me, but I said well, well, if he says so.
Felguérez added that being a professional artist implied work, that he should try to have an exhibition a year and commit himself to his talent. Years later, the teacher traveled to Mexico City, she learned to make her curriculum and was sponsored by the painter José Luis Cuevas.
“This has been my life as an artist. A lot of work, commitment, but at the same time I think I’ve been lucky and people like my work. And I have to be very thankful for that.”
export talent
In October 2022, Gloria Banda celebrated 50 years of artistic career. The Gómez Palacio city council decided to pay tribute to him at the Francisco Zarco Convention Center, through the exhibition Art Improving Lives. The teacher sold nearly 400 works in order to raise funds and donate them to charitable causes.
As mentioned, this legacy highlights her trip to Florence, Italy, in 2005. The artist won the bronze medal of the Firenze Prize. She herself considers that she obtained it thanks to the authenticity of her work. “He had an engraving on matte paper, a very Mexican paper […] I do a very Mexican subject that is pre-Columbian zoology”.
He competed with artists from all over the world and was surprised how the entire Tuscany region agreed to carry out the cultural year, something he has not seen in Mexico. She crossed the Atlantic with her husband to attend the delivery of diplomas. Her memory is fresh and her words draw her entering the Cinquecento Hall of Palazzo Vecchio.
“Where El David (one of its replicas) is on the outside, that is the Palazzo Vecchio. There are rooms in there. The Cinquecento Room refers to the room from 1500, which was the golden age of Gothic. There is the work of Leonardo da Vinci, of Michelangelo. I saw all the walls covered with those works, wow! And my engraving on matte paper there in the exhibition, because there was an exhibition with the winners”.
As memories light up his face, he describes how the fanfare sounded before he was awarded third place in the contest. “Wow, what a thrill. And they say: ‘Third place: Gloria Banda, from Torreón.’ And that begin: you-you-you-you-you. The Virgin Mary! And I went up to where the table was and they handed out the medals. Oh, I swear my legs were shaking.”
Gloria Banda will be 83 years old on July 5. Currently, she participates in the Contemporary collective exhibition, which the Visual Arts coordination of the Municipal Institute of Culture and Education (IMCE) has hosted at Casa de Cantera, in order to disseminate the work of women artists in the region.