Art and Football: Guayasamin

As happens every World Cup year, several confluences of art and football seem to pop up here and there. Whether it’s to assuage intellectuals’ fears about football, or to make the rest of us feel smart for a fleeting moment, I can’t say. Already we’ve seen this photo exposition in Quito, which wasn’t the only recent football-and-art exhibit in Ecuador. Now comes news that a play based in part on the life of Brazilian legend Garrincha is playing in Berlin. Well, we’re nothing if not joiners. So here’s a look at who I believe to be Ecuador’s greatest (and most famous) artist, the spectacular Guayasamin.

Oswaldo Guayasamin was born in Quito in 1919 to an indigineous father and mestizo mother. After graduating from the Quito School of Fine Arts, he had his first exhibition in 1942 when he was 23. Guayasamin later won the first prize at the Ecuadorian Salón Nacional de Acuarelistas y Dibujantes (1948), won first prize at the Third Hispano-American Biennial of Art in Barcelona (1955) and was named the best South American painter at the Fourth Biennial of São Paulo (1957). His later exhibits were debuted at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris and in the Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires. His works have been featured in the major museums of the Americas and Europe. But that’s just the nuts and bolts.

Guayasamin dedicated his life not only to painting (and sculpting) but also to fighting racism, classism and general injustice. His works reflect the pain and anguish that is the burden of most of humanity. He also used his art to denounce the violence that so dominated the century of his life (he died in 1999).

Here are some choice works from Guayasamin. I favor the line of works that feature those haunting hands that became one of his trademarks, so there are several of those here. Enjoy. And when you’re done, you have my permission to get back to the beer and footy!