Oswaldo GuayasamÃn
Oswaldo Guayasamín ( born July 6, 1919 in Quito, † March 10, 1999 in Baltimore) was a painter and sculptor and probably the most important artists of the 20th century Ecuador.
Life
Oswaldo Guayasamín was the son of a father and an indigenous mestizo mother and first of ten children. The artistic skills of Oswaldo were recognized early. After finishing school, he wrote themselves against the resistance of his father (the family of a retailer was quite poor ) at the art school as a student. The study he completed in 1941. In 1942, at the age of 23, he presented his first exhibition in a private art gallery in Quito. This caused a minor scandal because his pictures do not correspond to the ideal of the Academy of Fine Arts. Some photos impressed the later U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York was at that time, so much that he bought her.
From the money for it occupied Guayasamín stayed six months initially in the U.S. and went from 1945 to 1947 on a journey through many countries in South America. He also met Pablo Neruda and know it was a friendship that lasted for many decades. The impressions of this trip inspired him to his first series of paintings Huacayñán ( Quechua to German: The Way of Tears), in which he themed especially the misery and oppression of indigenous people in Latin America. The pictures of this cycle created 1946-1952 and has been shown at many exhibitions abroad.
In addition, he also painted portraits always important artists and mostly left-wing politician in Latin America, such as Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro. In addition to the friendship with Pablo Neruda also close contacts with Gabriel García Márquez emerged.
In 1971 he became President of the House of Ecuadorian Culture, the most important state cultural institution. In 1976 he founded the Fundacíon Guayasamín ( German: the Foundation Guayasamín ). The aim of the foundation was and is to collect the cultural heritage of the people and especially the indigenous people and preserve it. Until his death Guayasamín was president of the foundation, today it manages the most important part of his estate and is run by his sons.
In 1978, Oswaldo Guayasamín member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Spain and a year later an honorary member of the Academy of Arts of Carrara in Italy.
In addition to his paintings, he also devoted himself to the fine arts, particularly murals in public buildings. So he created in 1982 a 120 meter long wall in the new building of the Barajas Airport in Madrid. This wall, coated with acrylic and powdered marble, is divided into two halves: one is dedicated to Spain and other Spanish America. As of 1986, Oswaldo Guayasamin Corresponding Member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 1988 he designed a 360 square meter wall surface of a meeting room of the Ecuadorian Congress. In this picture there is a representation that combines the symbol of the CIA with a swastika, which led to angry protests of the present U.S. ambassador at the inauguration. In addition, he designed in 1993, the mural mothers and children in the input space of the seat of UNESCO in Paris.
In 1993 he took part in the opening of a museum dedicated to him in Havana, Cuba. On this occasion he presented his third portrait of Fidel Castro.
The foundation for the realization of a long cherished dream he laid in the year 1995: The establishment of the Guayasamín so-called Capilla del Hombre began ( German Chapel of Man ) in Quito. It was built in seven years, a comprehensive Museum, in the next Guayasamíns work also artistically designed overview of a millennium of Latin American history and cultural heritage can be seen. It has thus become one of the most important museums in Quito.
The opening of the Capilla del Hombre did not live Guayasamín. He died in 1999 of a heart attack in the U.S., where he stayed for the treatment of eye disease.
The " chapel " was inaugurated 29 and 30 November 2002 with a great ceremony. A speech was given by his friend Fidel Castro. The President Gustavo Noboa Bejarano (Ecuador) and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela ) and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, representatives of other States, UNESCO and many artists and intellectuals took part in the celebrations, in the course of which an eternal flame was lit for the human rights.
In a second phase of construction beyond the currently issued in the few hundred meters distant Foundation premises Guayasamins collections are to be integrated into the Capilla del Hombre. In addition, donated and posthumous works Guayasamíns from all phases of these also include paintings and drawings by other Latin American and European artists, as well as Guayasmins comprehensive collection of archaeological finds of the pre-Inca cultures of Ecuador (among Valdivia, Chorrera and Tolita ) and his collection of religious art, especially from the colonial period.
Foundation and Museums
In addition to the Capilla del Hombre and the exhibition spaces in the foundation itself, the Fundación Guayasamín maintains, among other things two shops for art and crafts in Quito and Guayaquil, as well as museums in Havana (Cuba) and Cáceres (Spain).
Work
In addition to his works of fine arts can be Guayasamíns painting in three cycles, each comprising specific thematic priorities, divided. These cycles are issued, each with over 150 pictures in the above described Capilla of Hombre:
The first cycle, created after his trip through South America, especially shows the suffering of the indigenous population. A frequent motif of the second cycle is a woman in front of her face or her child raises his hands protectively. For this cycle also includes the Blood tear, which he in honor of Salvador Allende, Victor Jara and Pablo Neruda, who died all three during or shortly after the military coup in Chile in 1973, painted in 1973.
Apart from the pictures that are attributed to the three cycles, he painted again and again flowers and landscapes of Ecuador that tell both the beauty as well as of the threat to the country.