In this controversial essay the painter Alejandro Otero (1921–90) questions the originality of the Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919?99), saying that the latter’s paintings reveal the influences that can be detected—all too clearly—in his treatment of figures and in his composition and use of color. As Otero works his way through a list of complaints that are intended to be educational (but which are actually damagingly critical), he wields his analytical scalpel to skewer the most obvious artistic influences in the Ecuadorian’s work and technique. In Otero’s opinion, Guayasamín—despite his age (34) and his undeniable authenticity—has never managed to develop a personal artistic language in which his influences have been dissolved into a unique style of his own. The Venezuelan painter sees Guayasamín’s greatest weakness in the literary, descriptive nature of his depiction of social subjects, something he finds reflected in the organization of his works at the exhibition in an arrangement that suggests the chapters of a book. The origins of this essay can be traced to a debate about the survival of social realism when faced with the emergence of the Abstract avant-garde in Venezuelan art circles. Participants included Francisco Salazar Martínez, Carlos Augusto León, Sergio Antillano, and the French diplomat and critic Gastón Diehl.
While Guayasamín was in Caracas he painted a mural at the Centro Simón Bolívar as part of the project directed by the architect Cipriano Domínguez. Two other Venezuelan artists were also involved: César Rengifo (a painter in the Realist style) and Carlos González Bogen (an Abstract painter, though his work has disappeared). This arrangement makes it very clear that the dictatorial regime that was in power at the time had no particular preference for any one artistic style.
This essay appeared in Alejandro Otero, Memoria Crítica, compilation and selection by Douglas Monroy and Luisa Pérez Gil (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores/Galería de Arte Nacional, 1993).
