David Sánchez Beltrán was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. He earned his Bachelor of Visual Arts degree from the Centro Morelense de las Artes (CMA; Morelos Center for the Arts) in 2013.
In 2016 David began his collaboration with the Centro Cultural Infantil La Vecindad, a children's cultural center founded in 1995 with a mission to introduce children to the visual arts, music, dance, and theater in a neighborhood of Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos. Beltrán proposed a workshop on how to make jaguar masks from recycled materials. The popularity of this workshop grew into a cultural project extending its reach to migrant child laborers working with their families harvesting sugar cane in the municipality of Xochitepec, Morelos. In 2017, the workshop was extended to the city of Miacatlán, Moreles, for the children and adolescents from the nearby lake and town of the same name, Laguna del Rodeo.
In 2019, Beltrán became the Coordinator of La Vecindad. He began to teach drawing and painting classes to young girls, boys and teens living in state shelters within the Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF; National System for the Comprehensive Development of the Family). Concurrently he produced a line of low and high-temperature ceramic objects called Abbure Tecuani (Brother Jaguar) in collaboration with his siblings, María Isabel, and Luis Fernando. Ceramics, along with graphic and pictorial techniques allow Beltrán other routes of representation.
Beltrán explores the relationships between the past and the present, notably through traditions such as the Danza de los Tecuanes – the dance of the jaguars, which coexists with characteristics of contemporary society. This intersectionality is what captures Beltrán’s imagination, the quality of memory which can be altered but not erased. His constant search for identity, the meaning of belonging, and reviewing his own familial history is a way of connecting with his origins, his family, and the land.