Oswaldo Guayasamín
Work. Numbered lithographs
The Guayasamín Museum in Quito is nowadays a must-see for all educated people and even for simple tourists. This genius of disjointed painting has been compared to no less than Michelangelo and his Last Judgement, to Goya and his Disasters of War, to Picasso and his Guernica.
For Federico Mayor Zaragoza: his painting is the expression and symbol of a universal American condition that has made art a tool for solidarity among men, and Luis María Ansón reveals his weakness for this immortal artist in these beautiful words: Guayasamín, the spring of the hands, the torrent of genius, the creator of colour, the worshipper of the drawn line, the poet of tragedy, the musician of the world, the sculptor of the soul, the artist of shuddering.
Thus, his unquestionable international prestige gives him a prominent place in the history of universal art.
Images
Further information
The so-called “painter of the American spirit”, the great Ecuadorian artist Guayasamín, of Indian origin, left this world at the age of 79 in March 1999, leaving his famous and ambitious project, The Chapel of Man, unfinished.
For many, Guayasamín is remembered as the most important Latin American artist of all time.
The constant feature of his painting has always been to protest against injustice, against intolerance, against the savage and gratuitous suffering caused by man, against war. But this very harsh, hard-hitting painting has a flip side: a song of love and hope, almost to the point of joie de vivre.
Since he won his first award in 1942, his rise and international recognition have been unstoppable, and many organisations and institutions have awarded prizes to this painter of strength, of storms, of the deep roots of his people, of the people who suffer, and of love as refuge and salvation.