Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919 - 1999)

Oswaldo Guayasamín

Oswaldo Guayasamín is an Ecuadorian painter, muralist and sculptor.

Oswaldo's father was an Indian, and the family was very poor, but the future artist was educated at the School of Fine Arts of Quito. Soon, literally in two years, he created a cycle of 103 paintings dedicated to the life of oppressed Indians in Latin America. Oswaldo Guayasamin also painted portraits of famous contemporaries, including Fidel Castro, whom he admired. He also created murals, frescoes, landscapes, and symbolic images.

The artist's works were exhibited in Paris, Moscow and in Leningrad, among other cities around the world, with amazing success. In 1957, at the Fourth Biennial in São Paulo, he was named the best South American artist.

Guayasamin was also a passionate collector. In 1978, the then famous artist donated to the State of Ecuador some 500 colonial paintings and sculptures, pre-Columbian archaeological sites, Goya and Picasso paintings that he had collected.