Oswaldo Guayasamín

OSWALDO GUAYASAMÍN (Quito, Ecuador, 1919 - Baltimore, U.S.A., 1999).
Untitled. Barcelona, October 1973.
Mixed media and collage on paper.
Signed, located and dated in the lower margin.
Measurements: 36 x 36 cm; 69 x 69 cm (frame).

This is a work of great expressive value. It condenses all the force of Guayasamín's social denunciation. The drawing shows us a disjointed face, drawn with the unmistakable line of the Ecuadorian master: fast, sure and nervous. The countenance is divided vertically by a sharp nose line. The left eye is large, with a dilated and dark pupil, surrounded by lines that suggest bags or extreme tiredness. The right is almost triangular, evoking an empty socket or a blank stare. The mouth adopts a grimace that could be a stifled scream. The jaw is barely suggested, focusing attention on the tension of the teeth.

The palette is discreet, with a predominance of ochers and an organic stain of grayish colors, pale blues and olive greens: a free-flowing stain, suggesting perhaps a tear, a shadow, or even a skeletal hand trying to cover the face, a recurring motif in Guayasamín. The collage element sharpens the rawness by creating relief and a tearing effect.

This work clearly belongs to the "Age of Wrath" series, Guayasamín's second major phase. In this phase, his aim was to denounce violence, racism and social injustice. The faces are bald, the hands bony and the expressions of universal anguish.

In September 1973 there had been the coup d'état in Chile and the death of Salvador Allende (a personal friend of Guayasamín). Being in Barcelona that year, he was also living the end of Franco's regime in Spain, a time of tension and hope.

One of the greatest names in Ecuadorian painting, Oswaldo Guayasamín demonstrated artistic gifts already in childhood, and even sold some paintings in the Plaza de la Independencia in his native Quito in his early years. Despite his father's opposition, he entered the School of Fine Arts in the Ecuadorian capital to study painting and sculpture, in the midst of the so-called Four Days' War. In 1941 he obtained the title and First Prize at the Mariano Aguilera Salon in Quito, and the following year he held his first solo exhibition, at the age of twenty-three. Between the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943 Guayasamín is in the United States, and later travels to Mexico, where he begins to work as an assistant to Orozco. He would later make a series of trips through Latin America, always finding the same situation of oppression of the indigenous society, to which he himself belonged. From then on, this will be a constant theme in his work. In these years of youth Guayasamín obtained all the National Prizes in his country, and at the age of thirty-six he won the Grand Prize of the III Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte, celebrated in 1955 in Barcelona. Later he also won the same award at the São Paulo Biennial (1957). Throughout his career, this master exhibited his work individually not only in various Latin American countries, but also in many European countries, the Soviet Union, China and the United States. In addition to his easel paintings, he painted murals, sculptures and monuments, now present in Latin America and Europe. In 1971 Guayasamín was named president of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, in 1978 a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, and a year later an honorary member of the Italian Academy of Arts. Currently his work is widely represented in the Foundation he created in Quito, and also in prominent international art galleries and private collections.