Oswaldo Guayasamin 1919

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Oswaldo Guayasamin 1919-1999
Born: 06 July 1919; Quito, Ecuador
Died: 10 March 1999; Baltimore, United States
Field: painting, sculpture
Nationality: Ecuadorian
Art Movement: Expressionism
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Early life
Guayasamín was born in Quito, to a native father and a Mestiza
mother, both of Quechua descent.[2] His family was poor and his
father worked as a carpenter for most of his life. He later
worked as a taxi and truck driver. He was the first child of ten
children in his family. When he was young, he enjoyed drawing
caricatures of his teachers and the children that he played with.
He showed an early love for art. He created a Pan-American art
of human and social inequalities which achieved international
recognition.
He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Quito as a painter
and sculptor. He also studied architecture there. He held his first
exhibition when he was 23, in 1942. While he was attending
college, his best friend died during a demonstration in Quito.
This incident would later inspire one of his paintings, "Los
Niños Muertos" (The Dead Children). This event also helped
him to form his vision about the people and the society that he
lived in.
Art career
Guayasamín won the 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.
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 the
indigenous lifestyle and poverty that appeared in his paintings.
In 1988, he painted a very controversial mural depicting the
history of Ecuador. The Congress of Ecuador asked him to do
so. However, the United States Government criticized him
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because the one of the paintings showed a man in a Nazi helmet
with the lettering "CIA" on it.[citation needed]
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, and was considered a
great loss to Ecuador. He is still lauded as a national treasure.
In 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.
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