|
After 60 Years, Major Retrospective
of
Oswaldo Guayasamin in the U.S.
WHAT:
“Of Rage and Redemption:
The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín”
WHEN: April 5 through May 29, 2008
WHERE: Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006
“Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo
Guayasamín”,
the first U.S. exhibit in almost sixty years of one of the
most highly regarded Latin American artists of the 20th
century, Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999),
will open at 6pm on April 4th at the Art Museum
of the Americas in Washington, D.C.
Of Rage and Redemption,
curated by Joseph Mella, includes over forty works from his
early paintings responding to Ecuador’s four-day civil war
of 1932 to what he called “La Ternura” (“The Tenderness”),
his final period beginning in the mid 1980s.
This exhibit was organized by the Center for Latin American
and Iberian Studies at Vanderbilt University and the
Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery. It is being
presented at the Art Museum of the Americas in collaboration
with the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown
University.
A special symposium, “The Life and Art of
Oswaldo Guayasamín,” will take place on
April 4, 2008
from
1pm to 4pm
at Riggs Library,
Georgetown University. This
symposium will feature presentations from a broad range of
experts on art history, Ecuadorian culture, and the life and
art of Guayasamín. The late artist’s son and grandson will
also participate in the symposium. For complete details on
this special program, please visit.
A series of public programming is planned for the
duration
of Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of
Oswaldo Guayasamín, including film screenings, a
gallery talk, and
family
workshops.
For a complete calendar of
events and more information on these programs please call
(202) 458-3752, or visit
www.museum.oas.org for a complete calendar of events.
Oswaldo Guayasamín
(1919-1999)
Admitted to the Escuela de Bellas Artes
(School of Fine Arts) of Quito, Ecuador, in 1932 at the age
of 12, Guayamasín honed his exceptional talents for painting
and drawing. His work of the next decade included pieces
indicative of his strong bond with his mother (such as
1941’s
Mother and Child #1)
as well as work responding to the violence and cruelty of
the world (such as 1942’s
Dead
Children #11).
By the early 1940s, Guayasamín had completed
his formal training and began to concentrate on his studies
of architecture, but soon thereafter returned his focus to
painting, holding his first major exhibition in Guayaquil,
Ecuador, which was followed by a seven-month tour of museums
in the United States, including participation in an exhibit
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York alongside such
other up-and-coming and influential Latin American artists
as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro
Siqueiros.
During the late 1940s and 1950s, the influence of the time
he spent in Mexico with Orozco is evident. Guayasamín’s
depictions of the struggles faced by indigenous peoples
often provide a message of hope. In the case of The Bull
and the Condor (1957), the condor (representing Andean
people) overcomes the bull (representing their conquerors).
It was during this period that the artist held a landmark
solo exhibition at the OAS (formerly known as the
Pan-American Union) that opened in June 1955.
Guayasamín became increasingly political during his Age
of Wrath period in the 1960s and 1970s. The
large-scale, five-part work
Meeting at the Pentagon
(1970) and Napalm (1976) expand upon his earlier
themes of imperialism, while The Tortured I-III
(1976-77) provides a moving tribute to Victor Jara, the
great Chilean activist and folk singer who was brutalized
and murdered during the coup and overthrow of Chilean
President Salvador Allende in 1973.
By the mid 1980s, Guayasamín had come full circle, returning
to his earlier themes of the bond between mother and child
and filling his work with an overall sense of hope for
humankind.
”Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of
Oswaldo Guayasamín” has been supported, in part, by
a generous gift from Susan and Ruff Fant. Additional support
has been provided by the Louise Bullard Wallace Foundation,
Nashville, the College of Arts and Science, Vanderbilt
University, the Fundación Guayasamín, the Inter-American
Development Bank Cultural Center, the Embassy of Ecuador in
Washington, DC, the Mission of Ecuador to the Organization
of American States, American Airlines, and Microsoft.
For more information or images in high-resolution, contact
Greg Svitil at (202) 458-6016 or gsvitil@oas.org,
or visit us on the web at www.museum.oas.org.
This exhibition will be on view at the Art
Museum of the Americas (201 18th Street, N.W.)
from April 5 through
May 29, 2008.
Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am-5 pm (closed
Mondays and Federal holidays). |
