06/06/2025
Oswaldo Guayasamín (Ecuador, b. 1919, d. 1999)
Mother and Child, 1955
Pen and ink on paper, 29 x 21"
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Collection
Gift of José Gómez Sicre
On this day in 1955, the exhibition Oswaldo Guayasamín of Ecuador opened at the OAS Main Building Gallery, precursor to the present-day AMA, running from June 6-July 5 of that year. Acquired by José Gómez Sicre for the OAS collection on the occasion of Oswaldo Guayasamín’s individual exhibition in 1955, Mother and Child is a stark depiction of poverty and suffering. Executed in black ink on white paper, the figures fill the vertical length of the composition, with the mother’s upturned face pressed against the upper limits of the frame. The mother’s crescent shaped head is echoed below by that of the tiny infant cradled in her arms, who tilts back its head in an attempt to nurse from its mother’s emaciated breasts. The baby’s protruding rib cage exacerbates this sense of near starvation. The mother’s arm curves around the child, but her outstretched palm is that of a beggar pleading for alms, indicating the desperation of her situation rather than providing comfort. Guayasamín’s use of spare outlines and sharp triangular forms, reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica, stems from the stylistic language he deployed in the Indian theme in his series Huacayñan (Trail of Tears), a group of 103 paintings divided into three thematic categories: the Indian, the Mestizo, and the Black. While the figures in this image cannot be specifically identified as indigenous, they clearly relate to the emphasis on denouncing human suffering characteristic of indigenism. Here, Guayasamín co-opts the Christian iconography of the Madonna and Child to highlight the suffering of innocents. He eliminates all narrative and avoids elaborating on the social context or historical moment. These are timeless symbolic figures that represent the perpetual suffering of the poor. Oswaldo Guayasamín, one of the most renowned twentieth-century Ecuadoran artists, was born in Quito to an indigenous father and a Mestizo mother. He was the eldest of ten children raised in extreme poverty. As did most artists of his generation, Guayasamín studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. In 1942 Nelson A. Rockefeller invited Guayasamín to the United States on a State Department grant, altering the course of his career. Guayasamín’s series Huacayñan (Trail of Tears), created between 1946 and 1951 and first exhibited in 1952, deploys the formal innovations he had been exposed to while abroad to depict Ecuador’s ethnic heritage. As a result, in 1955 he won first prize at the Third Hispano-American Biennial of Art in Spain and two years later he was named Best American Painter at the Bienal de São Paulo. After Huacayñan, Guayasamín began work on La edad de la ira (Age of Wrath), a series of more than 250 paintings addressing crimes against humanity. The artist donated the Age of Wrath series to the city of Quito after exhibiting the works in Rome in 1966; Mexico in 1968; Santiago, Chile in 1969; Madrid in 1972; Barcelona, Prague, Bratislava, and Brno in 1973; and Paris in 1974. His final series was La edad de la ternura (The Age of Tenderness). In addition to oil paintings, Guayasamín created numerous murals and sculptures and even worked in balsa wood and designed jewelry. His art reflects his leftist political leanings and continual involvement with human rights organizations. The Fundación Guayasamín in Quito continues his legacy, housing numerous original paintings as well as his extensive collection of pre-Columbian and colonial art. Guayasamín died in 1999 and three years later, on a site in the north of Quito, his Capilla del Hombre (Chapel of Man) opened to commemorate the tragic history of Latin America.
