Oswaldo Guayasamín

From Freepedia

Oswaldo Guayasamín (b. July 6, 1919 in Quito – d. March 10, 1999) was an Ecuadorian modern artist. He was born to a native father and a Mestiza mother. Proud of his backgrounds, he created a Pan-American portrait of human and social differences. Guayasamin is one of the great master artists of Ecuador, with the likes of other Ecuadorian masters such as Eduardo Kingman, Enrique Tabara, Felix Arauz, Juan Villafuerte, and Anibal Villacis.

He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Quito as painter and sculptor. He carried out his first exhibit when he was 23, in 1942.

In 1948 he won the first prize at the Ecuadorian Salón Nacional de Acuarelistas y Dibujantes. In 1955, at the age of 36, won first prize at the 3rd Hispano-American Biennial of Art in Barcelona, for El ataúd blanco. In 1957 he was named the best South American painter at the 4th Biennial of São Paulo.

His last exhibits were personally inaugurated in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, and in the Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires in 1995. In Quito, Guayasamin built a museum that features his work. Guayasamin's images capture the political oppression, racism, poverty, and class division found in much of South America.

Oswaldo Guayasamín dedicated his life to painting, sculpting, collecting, fighting injustice and adulating the virtues of the Cuban revoution 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 10th, 1999, was a day of national strikes by indigenous (whom he spent his life supporting) and other sectors of society, was a great loss to Ecuador. He is still lauded as a national treasure.