BIOGRAPHY
Gildo Medina is a visual artist who was born in Mexico City in 1980 who, for more than 20 years, has lived and worked in Paris, Madrid, Rome, Florence, New York, and Mexico City. The diverse social contexts and linguistic and cultural influences of the places that he has chosen to work and live are clearly manifest in his work, which express his vision of the present and portrays moments, beliefs, feelings, individuals, and societies as a sensory record of his own history.
His work is critical and confrontational; it defies simple definitions and his visual language is inspired by the complex essence of the human being. Medina’s work has undeniable realistic technical qualities that have been acclaimed by academics. For this he has been recognized with more than thirty awards in his different disciplines, and he is regularly featured in specialized art books by prestigious publishers, such as Assouline, Gestalten, and Taschen, where Senior Editor Julius Wiedemann, featured Medina in “Portraits” and twice included him in “The Illustrator. 100 Best from around the World” placing Medina among the world’s most relevant, recognized, and accomplished contemporary portraitists and illustrators.
Medina has exhibited in museums, galleries and art fairs around the world, including the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC), Maison et Objet, and the Cultural Institute of Mexico in Paris, the Casa de América in Madrid, Pinta Fair in Miami and in London, Design District in Dubai, MACO, and the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City.
Medina’s academic studies at a variety of renowned institutions underlie the way in which he communicates through his work. He studied drawing and painting at art academies in Florence, Italy and at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico. He obtained degrees in Design from the Ibero-American University and in Fashion Advertising from the Jannette Klein University in Mexico City; he studied Photography, Multimedia and Art Direction at Central Saint Martins in London; and he obtained a Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome. Medina is invited to lecture at well-known universities and to develop artistic projects by ministries of culture, embassies, cultural venues and luxury brands. His work can be found in important private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Mexico City, Paris, Florence, Berlin, Brussels, Madrid, London, Monte Carlo, Sao Paolo, Tehran, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney, among others.
