page_title: Oswaldo Guayasamín
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Oswaldo Guayasamín / Biography / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: La Capilla del Hombre (The Chapel of Man), Quito, Ecuador Français&#160;: La Chapelle de l'Homme, Quito, Équateur
context_page_description: Oswaldo Guayasamín was an Ecuadorian master painter and sculptor of Kichwa and Mestizo heritage.
context_section_description: Guayasamín started painting from the time he was six years old. He loved to draw from that age. Starting from watercolors and transforming all the way through to his signature humanity pieces, his art career had many highlights. Although tragedy molded Guayasamín's work, it was his friend's death that inspired him to paint powerful symbols of truth in society and injustices around him. While his interest was seldom with his school work, he began selling his art before the time that he could even read. After his attendance at the School of Fine Arts in Quito, his career took off.
  La Galería Caspicara, an art gallery opened by Eduardo Kingman in 1940 was one of the first places that Guayasamín was featured. His themes of oppression in the lower social classes allowed him to stand out and gain more recognition. "El Silencio" in particular, was a painting from this showcase that stood out. It marks a shift in Guayasamín's work from storytelling to focusing on his subjects symbolizing all human suffering. (http://scholar.library.miami.edu/1492books/OswaldoGuayasamin.pdf)
  Guayasamín met Jose Clemente Orozco while traveling in the United States of America and Mexico from 1942 to 1943. They traveled together to many of the diverse countries in South America. They visited Peru, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries. Through these travels, he observed more of the indigenous lifestyle and poverty that appeared in his paintings.
  In 1988 the Congress of Ecuador asked Guayasamín to paint a mural depicting the history of Ecuador. Due to its controversial nature, the United States Government criticized him because one of the figures in the painting shows a man in a Nazi helmet with the lettering "CIA" on it.
  Oswaldo Guayasamín won first prize at the Ecuadorian Salón Nacional de Acuarelistas y Dibujantes in 1948. He also won the first prize at the Third Hispano-American Biennial of Art in Barcelona, Spain, in 1955. In 1957, at the Fourth Biennial of São Paulo, he was named the best South American painter.
  The artist's last exhibits were inaugurated by him personally in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, and in the Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires in 1995. In Quito, Guayasamín built a museum that features his work. Guayasamín's images capture the political oppression, racism, poverty, Latin America lifestyle, and class division found in much of South America.
  Guayasamín dedicated his life to painting, sculpting, collecting; however, he was an ardent supporter of the communist Cuban Revolution 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 10, 1999, was considered a great loss to Ecuador and occurred in the midst of a 
  political and socioeconomic crisis, with the day marked by strikes by the indigenous people (whom he spent his life supporting) and other sectors of society. He is still lauded as a national treasure.
  In 2002, three years after his death, Guayasamín's masterwork, La Capilla del Hombre ("The Chapel of Man"), was completed and opened to the public. The Chapel is meant to document not only man's cruelty to man but also the potential for greatness within humanity. It is co-located with Guayasamín's home in the hills overlooking Quito.
caption: La Capilla del Hombre in Quito
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