On March 10, 2015, were completed sixteen years of the death of the Latin America Painter, a title granted by the Cuban leader Fidel Castro to his Ecuadorian friend Oswaldo Guayasamin. By now there is another dream pending to the memory of the artist.
Just three years ago, the Guayasamín family announced it is planned to build a new multi-storey building to locate all the works of the outstanding figure of arts at national and continental levels that can not be displayed because of space issues.
The idea is to build a facility that would add to the complexity of the Chapel of Man, which Guayasamin screened at the perimeter adjacent to his home, which since 2012 was established as a museum-workshop, as he dreamed it, and that would be integrated to a cultural complex of 12 hectares and 18 000 square meters, which would be erected on the land that is now used as parking for visitors.
Pablito Guayasamin Junior told this reporter a few months ago during the inauguration of the headquarters of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) in the Middle of the World City that the idea of being able to display all the work remains delayed because of lack of funding.
When I asked how many works remain on the shelves of the Foundation, he shrugged and confessed there were several thousand, and it is feared that they may suffer some damage on hold to raise funds to unleash the initiative.
What many do not know
How much has been said about the work and life of Guayasamin, who was born on July 6, 1919 in Quito. But what many do not know is that this painter made built his house with disproportionate spaces in magnitude because he wanted the spaces could one day serve as showrooms and workshop for beginners in this art.
In a video presented on the opening day in 2012, the house already opened to the public, Guayasamín appeared saying that all his work was to be donated to his people, from which he had also emerged, without forgetting his roots.
To the house next to the summit facility conceived by the famous Ecuadorian and the tree of life where his ashes lie, will be added a new showroom.
In that tree, where his cremains remains in a clay pot were deposited, also a palette with which he painted, a bottle of vodka and a Cuban cigar were also "planted”, as requested in life before a heart attack brought to an end his existence in 1999.
Handel Guayasamín, the artist's nephew and head of the renovation, told this reporter in 2012 that when restoring his home it was ought to share the Guayasamin´s most intimate spaces and display his works and collections to the peoples of the region, as he always wanted.
"The idea is to feel that Oswaldo relives in this space," said the architect, who was also in charge of designing the Chapel of Man.
The funny thing is that Handel is the son of the architect who designed the house of Guayasamin, and then he was in charge of remodel the work of his father, which is situated on a hillside overlooking the Pichincha volcano and the Andean valley that occupies Quito, in the Bella Vista sector.
From the house the dome of the building of the Chapel of Mancan be seen, which was conceived by the painter inspired by an Inca sun temple as a tribute to pre-Columbian America.
According to Handel Guayasamín, after thirteen years of being closed, the one that was the final resting place of the artist is a place to meet those who things that remember him in life and with a part of the history of Latin American peoples for its ancient collections.
The final resting place
Many of the domestic and foreign visitors seek to reach the majestic Chapel of Man, which Guayasamin wanted to build as a perpetual tribute to humanity. However, not many know that the cultural complex has been expanded to the surrounding housing, nor about the new ideas.
There you can see a vague amount of pictorial and even pre-Columbian objects that were part of the collection of the artist's works and the music that the artist enjoyed while painting can also be listened.
Ecuadorian painter and sculptor asked "that these cultural assets, which he collected all his life, come back to his people," his son Pablito said. "It would be a terrible and criminal selfishness that descendants simply stay with the works, despite its great value."
At the opening of the museum-workshop of about 3000 square meters, the house was full of personalities, diplomats, ministers, businessmen and singers like the Argentinian Leon Gieco, Chilean Alberto Plaza and Colombian Andrés Cabas, who were in Quito for the Festival "Todas las voces todas."
That day, it was almost impossible to walk through the crowd, which then could visit every space, confirming that Guayasamín had a "purpose" with his housing and the Tree of Life, as he called the tree that he sowed. He asked that his ashes rest there and from it a rattle and other objects hung.
In the Chapel of Man he even count on the support of Cuban architects in its initial design, then with the auction of humidors produced in Ecuador and inside made with tobacco made with leaves from the best place where the plant is produced on the Caribbean island, and which were signed by Fidel Castro in fundraising.
From the walls of the house hangs an eclectic selection of works ranging from virgins in golden frames from the called Quito baroque and bleeding crucifixes, even paintings by Pablo Picasso, Agustin Redondela and Benjamin Palencia. They are also desktops and shelves, antique pieces that Guayasamin gathered not because of their data, he said, but because of the cultural message they contained.
Now we just need the resources to make his work no longer be stored on shelves, at the mercy of the weather, despite the efforts of his family to be intact. Latin America and all humanity should put a bit in this noble purpose: to safekeeping the work of who could capture with the brush as a way of complaining the reality and human suffering.
