The first visit to Puerto Vallarta for Marco Alvarez was actually to scout the city as a location for a major Mexican Tri-Athalon event. At that moment, he represented the organizers, but when the event came to fruition he participated as one of the athletes, a passion that he's pursued for several years. It involves daily training and a lot of self discipline to be competitive, qualities that are also vital to a painter. The discipline is especially crucial to an artist focusing on the abstract. Not only is it rought terrain with no maps available, the general public often doesn understand and we humans seldom appreciate what we can't comprehend. One wonders if Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko were ever accosted with the denigrating declaration of, "My six year old kid could do that!" Naturally, these artists had the academic credentials and a large body of older figurative expressionists became one of the most important in art in the Twentieth Century.

Marco Alvarez also has the credentials, having studied figurative watercolors for several years with one of the leading practitioners of that technique in Mexico at that time, Rene Capdeviell Licastro. He also studied design and composition with one of Latin America's major artists, Mathias Goeritz, and he went on to receive a degree in Architecture from the University of Mexico. He has continued to work simultaneously as an architect and painter since 1990, a combination of sensibilities that many observers find readily evident in Marco's sophisticated blending of composition, color and texture in his paintings.

Marco was born in Mexico City and lived there until he moved to Puerto Vallarta. By then he had already presented two very successful exhibits at Galería Pacífico, and his attraction to the ocean and the fatigue that can arise from living and working in one of the world's largest cities combined to inspire the move. The fact that Vallarta is one of the most important art markets in Mexico as well as being one of the most thriving real estate markets in the country made it the perfect choice for this painter/architect. The vibrant contrast between the greens of the jungle and the mountains with the blues of the ocean have served to inspire both the painter and the architect comprising the talented young Alvarez. Several more successful exhibitions at Galería Pacífico have followed since, and the prosepcts for new architectural projects keep expanding. In Puerto Vallarta, Marco has found the perfect home for his dual talents to grow and prosper.

Alvarez has exhibited in Denver and New York City in the United States as well as in galleries and museums throughout Mexico. His work is in several corporate collections in both countries, to include MasterCard International, The Midland Bank Corp, HSBC, the Mexican Secretariat of Commerce and Industry, Harley Davidson Co and Scripps Health.

In order to keep this website up-to-date, we will be using the Picasa photo galleries to periodically upload new work by our artists.
** Please click here to see more of MARCO ALVAREZ'S RECENT WORK >