Eva
Beloglovsky

Eva began working with art and artists in the early 1970s and grew into a respected dealer. She met Byron in 1973. Soon afterward he showed her a landscape she fell in love with — but she was building her house and could not afford it, and he, building his own in Mixquiahuala, would not lower the price.

Two years later they ran into each other at a framing shop in the Condesa, and he invited her for coffee at his studio. By chance, that same painting hung in the entrance. “My painting!” she said. “This time I am paying for it. And do you have anything else you want to sell?” Within the week she had sold two of his canvases and bought hers — and handed him an envelope stuffed with bills.

Byron liked to joke that they were one-peso bills. “No,” he told himself, “I won’t let go of this blonde.”

What began as a working relationship became a partnership matched in strength only by its romance, and then a marriage. Relentless, tireless, always inventing a new project, Eva combined two rare gifts: an expert’s eye for art and a remarkable talent for bringing it to people.

In 1981 she founded the Art-Forum Gallery in Mexico City, which she directed for decades. Together they mounted exhibitions, multimedia presentations and benefits, and traveled the world — to exhibitions, and to the museums Byron loved.

It was Eva who threw the 1983 luncheon at their home in Mixquiahuala where Rufino Tamayo, who had stopped eating, was coaxed into three rum-and-cokes and a pit-roasted chicken drumstick, and stayed well into the night. Byron and Eva counted it among the most vivid days of their lives.

Eva conceived the David Ben Gurion Cultural Park together with Byron. To fund its Museum of Contemporary Art she organized “Arte por México”: twenty-one of Mexico’s leading artists each made a lithograph, printed in Mixquiahuala, and three hundred portfolios were sold to build the museum.

She coordinated the book “Byron Gálvez: to touch the untouchable”, and was named to direct the Museum of Contemporary Art of Hidalgo.

Since Byron’s death in 2009, Eva has cared for his work and his name: the archive of his life, the story of each piece, and the people around the world who live with his art.