I learned about Oswaldo Guayasamin, the famous Ecuadorian artist of Quechua and Mestizo heritage, just a few months ago while researching interesting places to visit in Quito. He grew up poor but had a knack for painting and sculpture. He made his art debut quite young, just in his late 20s, which propelled him into an exciting life in the global art world. He used his fame and art to highlight painful truths of society, such as racism, social and cultural injustices (particularly to indigenous peoples given his own background), and inequality and oppression amongst people of lower social classes. His most famous paintings depict human suffering in multiple forms. It’s clear from looking at his work that he was heavily influenced by Pablo Picasso, as there are cubist elements to a lot of his stroke work that resemble Picasso’s art. In addition to recognition for his artwork, he was also given a prize for “an entire life of work for peace” by UNESCO. He’s also likened to the Michelangelo of Latin America by a number of art historians. In 2022, three years after his passing, La Capilla del Hombre (“the chapel of man”), housing his art, opened to the public, next to the house he spent the last twenty years of his life in. Both are located in the high hills overlooking Quito (which also meant it was a trek and a lot of sweat for us to get up there!). The chapel was made to document man’s cruelty to man and also the potential of greatness within humanity. La Capilla del Hombre and Guayasamin’s house were our last stops yesterday late afternoon before ending the day and packing up to head down to Guayaquil this morning.

While in La Capilla, I wandered around and looked at his depictions of human suffering and misery. The “Mural of Misery” painted in 1969 with shades of grey and white, was particularly sobering; you could almost feel the pain of the people he was painting given their facial expressions and contortions. I also noticed that he had a number of original paintings (acrylic) and sketches that were for sale. Just for fun, I took a peek at how much they cost, and I was completely shocked: the sketches went for $25-30 USD, while the original unframed paintings cost only around $2,500-2,700 USD. It made me realize that given Guayasamin is Ecuadorian, he is ultimately seen as Latin American, or brown, in an art world that mostly values White men and their work. An original Picasso, so a similar style of painting, would likely go for hundreds of thousands, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, today. Picasso original sketches themselves sell for $15-30K+. This whole thing just seemed ridiculous to me. Guayasamin doesn’t have the same name recognition as Picasso (obviously), but I’d say that a lot of their painting style is pretty much the same and is of similar quality. But at the end of the day, that’s the difference between how the white gaze values white men’s work versus brown men’s work.

When I visit art museums during our travels, I oftentimes think back to my sophomore year of high school when I studied Advanced Placement Art History. I always remember how overwhelmed I was by the size of the art history book. Despite the fact that over half the book covered Asian, Latin American, and African art, we had to skip over those sections because as my teacher told us, “those regions won’t be covered on the A.P. exam. But you can feel free to study them on your own time.” Early on, we were taught that people of color, their histories, their stories, their art, do not matter. And it was the beginning of my “what the fuck kind of world do we live in” perspective.

Despite all that and the state of our White-valuing world, I loved visiting Guayasamin’s house and museum, and I loved learning about his life and art and how he tried to depict people who were frankly being erased from society. I’m happy that I’ve been able to discover artists like him during our travels around the world. It reminded me of when we visited Bogota, Colombia, in May 2019, and how during that trip, we stumbled upon Fernando Botero’s museum, Museo Botero. I hadn’t known about him prior to our Colombia trip, but I was so happy we found out about him and perused his museum. His style, known as Boterismo, depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated form. Some pieces are kitschy or humorous. Others are political and instigating. But I think work like Botero’s could appeal to people who don’t even think they like or care about art.

While I enjoyed seeing Guayasamin’s home and art, Kaia was a bit less interested. Chris had to do some toddler finagling while I was walking through the house, attempting to listen to our guide, and also take a closer look at his artwork. Eventually, she had to “go to jail” in her stroller, which she was not the least bit happy about. All she wanted to do was run around try to touch everything (which… would not have been good for anyone). But I suppose art museums and historical homes were not necessarily made for toddlers to roam around in. Kaia’s a bit young to understand art, history, or art history, but I hope that when she’s older that she’ll be able to develop an appreciation for all the above.