Oswaldo Guayasamin Exhibit at MoLAA

Updated on 04/14/09
I'm excited so many of you will be joining me on Sunday for the Guayasamin tour and lunch. We will be going to a restaurant half a mile away from MoLAA and since it is Grand Prix weekend we will leaving our cars at MoLAA and walk over so you might want to wear shoes you can walk in. Also keep in mind that traffic will be bad so please leave a bit early since our tours start promptly at 11am, thanks :) I have also worked out with the restaurant for us to pay individually and they do take credit cards and have a back room reserved.

Restaurant info: (south of MoLAA)
Mi Lupita
1202 E Broadway
LB, 90802
(562) 432-0163

Thanks,
Gina
(714) 393-4143

This event is also posted with the Circulo de Amigos Meetup Group

This is being cross-posted with the Long Beach Spanish Language Group

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As a fellow Ecuadorian I'm proud that MoLAA will be hosting some of the art work of Oswaldo Guayasamin, below you will be more information regarding the exhibit. One of our members, Nanette Brill, has volunteered to give us a private tour in Spanish, thank you Nanette.

Also this event is FREE!

Ciao,
Gina

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Opening on April 19, 2009, MOLAA will be the only West Coast venue for the national traveling exhibition of the renowned Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín (Ecuador, 1919-1999) titled, Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín.

The first exhibition of its kind in the United States in over 50 years, the exhibition was organized by Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery in cooperation with the Guayasmín Foundation, Quito, Ecuador, and curated by Vanderbilt Gallery Director, Joseph Mella.

Profiling the evolution of Guayasamín’s life and his concern for social and political injustice, the 80 paintings, drawings and prints focus on the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Andean region as well as universal issues of human suffering, war and violence. Oswaldo Guayasamín, a mestizo and eldest son in a family of ten children, is considered one of Ecuador’s most important painters of social realism who used his art to oppose violence, war and social injustice. He earned a reputation as Ecuador’s official painter, in the 1940s when he presented an exhibition of paintings and portraits of Indians that provoked a scandal.

Non-academic in style and subject matter, Guayasamin established his signature style of indigeniso which is especially recognized for its dramatic representation of the human figure. Defined in powerfully exaggerated proportions and forms, Guaysamin’s figures are charged with a range of emotions—from human dignity to grief, loss and anguish. Guayasamin said about his art, “My painting is to hurt, to scratch and hit inside people’s hearts. To show what Man does against Man.” Exhibition curator, Joseph Mella states, “Guayasamin’s paintings are not, however, illustrative. They are universal, compassionate, and in the end humanistic expressions of an artist with equal measures of genius and of love for all mankind.”

The exhibition highlights several of Guayasamín’s most important works created during his 60 year career. An early work, Los ninos muertos /The Dead Children, 1942, depicts the innocent victims—mothers and children—of poverty, hunger and death. Painted in a thick mud-colored impasto texture, this painting was seminal for the recognition of Guayasamin’s artistic vision. In the 1960s Guayasamin broadened his worldview to embrace universal themes of crimes against humanity, developing a series of over 100 politically charged paintings titled, Edad de la ira / Age of Wrath. Two large and impressive works from this series appear in the exhibition, La espera II,VII, VIII /Waiting III,VII, VIII, 1968-69 and Los torturados I-III/The Tortured I-III, 1976-77 which was inspired by the brutal torture and murder of the Chilean activist folk singer, Victor Jara, killed during the overthrow of President Allende’s Chilean socialist government in 1973.

Amplified by a series of drawings and prints, the exhibition profiles not only the artist’s Latin American roots but also his universal voice of passion for the world to seek peace and human compassion in the time of war and conflict. An illustrated catalog with scholarly essays accompanies the exhibition, and is available for sale in the MoLAA Store.