Oswaldo Guayasamín is one hundred years old and we are celebrating it today. Since he left us with a, ‘I’ll always come back’, he has not stopped being with us for the causes and struggles that defined his life and his work. By amalgamating the aesthetic transformation and the transformation of the world into his indelible work, he projected himself into history as a true cultural phenomenon and a cultural artifact in and of himself. From his singular sense of aesthetics, the Master committed himself to ethics and the senses of humanity, as can be seen in his own created artistic line to expose the “monstrosities committed against human beings” with a call for action and tenderness.
With the postulate that the creator is not simply a spectator but part of the content and context, Guayasamín turned his palette into an instrument to give living testimony to social causes, to evidence the realities of the peoples, their struggles and their people. This is evident in the hundreds of his Latin American oil paintings, in his portraits of committed people, in their offerings of tenderness, in their engravings, in their historical murals and profound contents.
It is because of this deep perspective of the world that we recognize Guayasamín among the referents of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity. The commemoration of what would have been his one hundredth year, a relevant fact in itself because it multiplies the meaning inherent in his art for the mobilization of ideas, that its message liberates are indispensable to channel us towards a future filled with the senses of humanity.
July 6, 2019