The 2024 Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival gets underway this weekend. Each year, one of the highlights of the event is the Invited International Artist. This year’s special guest artist, whose home is in Spain, has a strong connection to Pensacola.
“I am Aurelio Diaz Trillo. I came from Spain,” said Trillo, whose professional artistic name is “Buly.”
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Buly was actually born in Huelva in southwest Spain. But he’s now a proud resident of Pensacola’s Sister City of Macharaviaya.
His son, Pablo, explains.
“So Macharaviaya is like a 300-people (person) town, so it’s really little, but with a long, long and important history,” he said. "So the connection started because, during the Independence War here in the U.S., we have a really important family in my town. Galvez, they are called.”
This is a reference to the family of Spanish Gen. Bernardo de Galvez. In Pensacola, Galvez is celebrated for reclaiming the city for Spain and, more significantly, for helping defeat the British Empire during the Revolutionary War.
“You have the really famous Battle of Pensacola," said Pablo. "Galvez was there helping the USA against the British during those times and we’re really proud about that good kind of connection. It’s strange and really important at the same time.”
Buly reminds his son that there’s more to the story.
“And this is really funny, because in our town, and you have to remember we’re in the south of Spain, we celebrate the 4th of July,” Pablo shares with a sense of pride. “We dress up and we recreate the battle and a lot of people from the USA come to see and take part in the recreation. So, you’re invited if you want to come.”
Looking at his early life, Buly said his path to becoming a professional artist was not a straight line.
READ MORE: Stories about Gen. Bernardo de Galvez
“He was born in Huelva and he studied engineering, actually," said Pablo, this time, translating for his father. "But then he realized his passion was to paint. So he moved to Seville, which is next to Huelva, a really important city in the south of Spain. Then he moved to London and he studied fine art in the Chelsea School of Art.”
Buly says he learned almost everything in London before moving to his current residence of Macharaviaya in the southern Spanish province of Malaga. He chuckles when asked about how went from an engineering degree in 1952 to art as a career over 20 years later.
“He’s loved painting his whole life, but it was a conflict in his house. Because back then, painting meant being poor,” Pablo explained. “But later on he talked to his parents and they helped him a lot during the process, and that was the main reason he was able to start as an artist.”
Declaring painting as his passion was easy, but it took some time to develop his own style as a painter.
“It’s a really hard process. I have a lot of masters, of course, Pablo Picasso, who is also from Malaga...the German expressionists, as well, and Francis Bacon,” son Pablo translates. “(There have been) a lot of masters in my process and I’ve been working really hard in order to achieve my own language, my own style and I’m still doing it today.”
His works make unique use of time and challenge the concept of space, with his figures coming out of the frame. Buly says his work speaks for itself and it has been said that people can look at any of his paintings and say: It is a “Buly.”
There have been exhibitions of his work across much of Europe, in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Belgium. Now, he says he’s pleased to have this first opportunity to debut his work in the United States.
“It was like a huge surprise to be here because I didn’t expect to be in Pensacola with my son,” proclaimed Buly. “It’s our first time in the USA. So we started to look for pictures of Pensacola and videos of the festival, and we were really, really happy and excited about the chance. So I tried to portray all of that in my paintings and hope you really enjoy it.”
And while he generally works inside and his subject matter is inside, the artist is adding a special element for his Pensacola showing.
The name of the exhibition is “The Water Room.”
This means all of the paintings Buly is showcasing during the Arts Fest are related to water.
“And you have the most beautiful sea I’ve ever seen," he said through his son. "So, of course, I want you to think about Pensacola when you see my paintings. And I feel like the best possible experience for an artist is when you connect somehow with your public, with spectators.”
Buly will present an artist talk about his work during a presentation Wednesday evening, 6:30, at Pensacola State College’s Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts.
“Wednesday evening, we invite you all to be there and get to know my father a little bit more,” Pablo added.
The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival runs this Friday & Saturday, from 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sunday, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. You’ll find Buly’s booth near the Gazebo.
“Gracias a ti,” he says.
