Career
editGuayasamín started painting from the time he was six years old. Starting from watercolors and transforming all the way through to his signature humanity pieces, his art career had many highlights. Although tragedy molded Guayasamín's work, it was his friend's death that inspired him to paint powerful symbols of truth in society and injustices around him. While his interest was seldom with his school work, he began selling his art before the time that he could even read.[1] After his attendance at the School of Fine Arts in Quito, his career took off.
La Galería Caspicara, an art gallery opened by Eduardo Kingman in 1940 was one of the first places that Guayasamín was featured. His themes of oppression in the lower social classes allowed him to stand out and gain more recognition. "El Silencio" in particular, was a painting from this showcase that stood out. It marks a shift in Guayasamín's work from story-telling to focusing on his subjects symbolizing all human suffering.[2]
Guayasamín met Jose Clemente Orozco while traveling in the United States of America and Mexico from 1942 to 1943. They traveled together to many of the diverse countries in South America. They visited Peru, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and other countries. Through these travels, he observed more of the indigenous lifestyle and poverty that appeared in his paintings.
While Guayasamin is known for expressing his political and social views pertaining to Latin America through his canvases, the Ecuadorian also took stances on international issues.[3] In one of Guayasmin's collections, "The Age of Anger", he included over 250 different works that expressed suffering through the major tragedies of the 20th century, some of these including concentration camps facilitated by Nazi Germany and the Hitler Regime, the death toll of World War II, and atomic bombs dropped on innocent people.[3] Aside from the international themes presented in "The Age of Anger", he still placed emphasis on the sufferings of his native land in Latin America.[3] These sufferings included the violent acts placed on people by the dictatorships among Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.[3] Guayasamin believed in the integration of Latin America and incorporated this belief into his work by empathizing with the people of these nations.[3]
In 1988 the Congress of Ecuador asked Guayasamín to paint a mural depicting the history of Ecuador. Due to its controversial nature, the United States Government criticized him because one of the figures in the painting shows a man in a Nazi helmet with the lettering "CIA" on it.[4]
Guayasamín won first prize at the Ecuadorian Salón Nacional de Acuarelistas y Dibujantes in 1948. He also won the first prize at the Third Hispano-American Biennial of Art in Barcelona, Spain, in 1955. In 1957, at the Fourth Biennial of São Paulo, he was named the best South American painter.
The artist's last exhibits were inaugurated by him personally in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, and in the Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires in 1995. In Quito, Guayasamín built a museum that features his work. Guayasamín's images capture the political oppression, racism, poverty, Latin America lifestyle, and class division found in much of South America.
Guayasamín dedicated his life to painting, sculpting, collecting; however, he was an ardent supporter of the communist Cuban Revolution in general and Fidel Castro in particular. He was given a prize for "an entire life of work for peace" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. His death on March 10, 1999, was marked by a day of national strikes by the indigenous people (whom he spent his life supporting) and other sectors of society. Moreover, Guayasamín was considered a great loss to Ecuador and is still lauded as a national treasure.
La Capilla del Hombre in Quito
editIn 2002, three years after his death, Guayasamín's masterwork, La Capilla del Hombre ("The Chapel of Man"), was completed and opened to the public. The Chapel is meant to document not only man's cruelty to man but also the potential for greatness within humanity. It is co-located with Guayasamín's home in the hills overlooking Quito. His most famous mural, "Ecuador", is exhibited here and both stand to honor the legacy that Oswaldo Guayasamín left behind- social equality and a voice for the voiceless.[5]
Until his death in 1999, Oswaldo Guayasamín's mission of peace and goodness to humanity was evident. His artwork continually reflected this mission of loving his neighbor's and making the world into a better place. Upon being asked if he believes that there is brotherhood among Latin American peoples, Guayasamín replied in a way that summarizes everything that his artwork shows: he said, "With the borders in place, they teach us from childhood on to hate those on the other side, but that is a new and superficial lesson compared with teaching us to love our neighbors. It's virtually the same throughout the continent-... in the end, everyone has some artificially provoked grievance, and the armies of Latin America bear much of the blame for this disunity".[3]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:1was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "An Art That Transcends Time".
- ^ a b c d e f Guayasamin, Oswaldo; Murphy, Fred (1992). "Latin America Faces the Quincentenary: An Interview with Oswaldo Guayasamin". Latin American Perspectives. 19 (3): 101–103. JSTOR 2633770.
- ^ Los Angeles Times, December 09, 1989
- ^ "Art in Motion / Guayasamínʼs Ecuador Unframed" (PDF).