Oswaldo Guayasamín

OSWALDO GUAYASAMÍN (Quito, Ecuador, 1919 - Baltimore, U.S.A., 1999).
"Landscape of Quito".1995.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
With label on the back of the gallery Ignacio de Lassaletta, Barcelona.
Measurements: 100 x 100 cm; 130 x 128 cm (frame).

The landscapes of Quito that Guayasamín painted throughout his career reveal an essential aspect of his work: the way in which he transferred his expressive language - usually associated with the human figure and social denunciation - to the representation of the Andean territory. In these views, the city and the mountains cease to be mere scenery and become spaces charged with tension, where geography condenses the same emotional intensity that characterizes his best-known series.

In this landscape, the urban structure and the volcanic relief are synthesized through concentrated forms, marked hallmarks and a palette that suggests instability and latent energy. The mountain, almost monumental, dominates the composition and conveys a sense of pressure and drama that refers to the historical and symbolic background of Quito's environment.

Rather than describing a specific topography, Guayasamín uses the landscape as an emotional territory: a space where the inner strength of the Andes finds a direct correspondence with his own plastic language. These works demonstrate that, even in moving away from the human figure, the artist kept intact his ability to turn any motif into a field of expressive intensity.

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 the 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.