Visual artist Miguel Valverde of Chihuahua City, Mexico, has more than two decades of experience devoted to the exploration of color, identity, and cultural symbolism. His body of work spans muralism, sculpture, and graphic art, blending traditional techniques with a contemporary aesthetic that creates a dialogue between Mexico and Europe.
Valverde has participated in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries across Mexico, the United States, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Slovakia. His work is distinguished by the integration of desert imagery, lucha libre (Mexican wrestling), nature, and the duality between life and death, offering a profound reflection on heritage and collective memory.
Tri-county residents and visitors will now have the opportunity to see his work close up with an exhibition—Desierto Peregrino—at the Museum of the Big Bend on the Sul Ross State University Campus with an opening reception on Friday December 5 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The reception will include light refreshments, beer, and wine. Admission is $10 for the general public, free for museum members. (A closing reception will be held on February 28, 2026.) Visit museumofthebigbend.com/exhibits/miguel-valverde to purchase tickets.
Through his art, Miguel Valverde dares to reveal to us the essence of northern Mexico—unfolding a vision that reaches deep into its landscapes, alive with color, flora, and fauna. The climates themselves are painted through color: vast scenes stretching from the Baja California Peninsula to the deserts of Sonora and Chihuahua, where temperatures swing from the searing 48°C to the biting -14°C—lands that know nothing of half measures.
Mexico cannot be defined by a single color, nor by a single identity. It holds as many as its living world—as its plants and animals, its legends and music, its silences and its boundless biodiversity. To recognize what the North embodies is to rediscover love and pride for the land where we were born, the land we behold through Desierto Peregrino.
—Ricardo Flores MartÃnez, manager, Museum of Tequila and Mezcal