Guayasamin Museum and La Capilla del Hombre

This morning my dad and I went to the Guayasamin Museum. Oswaldo Guayasamin is the the most famous Ecuadorian painter of the 20th Century. (Note here that my dad has always loved the visual arts and that he has taught Art History for many years. This was the one thing he wanted to do while he was here, aside from spending time with Sandra and going to the wedding.)

Guayasamin's work focuses on the poor indigenous populations of Ecuador and South America, showing their suffering and helping them to find a voice and fight the massive oppression that they still suffer today, albeit to a lesser degree.

There are two important locations - the Museum located in his old home (he died in 2006) and the Chapel of Man, La Capilla del Hombre. The Chapel is his homage to man. It was absolutely humbling. Even stumbling, half dead, feeling like crap and breathing hard after climbing only a couple of steps (I told you the altitude was killing me), the Chapel was a profoundly moving experience. I think the photos will say it all.

Unfortunately, since I am posting this at a later date, I don't have my dad's pictures of his actual artwork, except for two that I took. I do have the three quotes located inside the Chapel, which are what most moved me. I will try and translate them to the best of my ability.

May we all remember just how blessed we really are.

This is his painting of the Andean Condor, found only here in Ecuador (I do believe), killing the Bull, the symbol of Spain. A metaphor of the indigenous tearing down their oppressors: the white, european upper classes.


This is his painting of Pinochet, the former Chilean Dictator, who still has not been brought to justice for his crimes against the Chilean people.


"I cried because I did not have shoes, until I saw a boy who did not have feet."



This is perphaps the most profoundly moving pieces of writing I have come across. It brought both my dad and I to tears. It took me a few minutes to fully translate it for him. I hope you find it as moving.

"From town to town, from city to city, we were witnesses of the most immense misery: towns of black clay, in black earth, with children plastered with black mud; men and women with skin burned by the cold, where their tears have been frozen for centuries, until they did not know if they were made of salt or stone, music of andean flutes that describes the immense solitud without time, without gods, without sun, without corn, only clay and wind."



This quote was both at his home and here at the Chapel of Man. I think for Guayasamin, this is his way of reminding people that the desire and ability of the oppressed to rise and change their fate will never be extinguished - that it will forever live on in those who remain.

"Keep a light burning, because I will always return."