"During the Nineteenth Century, the artists of this continent accustomed to European refinement, were inspired by the language and culture of the old continent. Artistic activity was reduced as a consequence of the protest made by artists due to the absence of a favourable environment to develop their activities.

"Feeling that they were part of the occidental culture, painters imitated the works of their European contemporaries. Nevertheless, in spite of taking those models for artistic creation, Latin American art was not developing at the same pace as European art.

"Latin America would define its future through elements provided by the representatvies of two cultures; one with its roots in the past -- clinging to a tradition which it could not justify - and another - a minority, urban - of European inspiration.

"Later, in the early Twentieth Century, and under the influence of the Russian and Mexican Revolutions, artists attempted to create an original Latin American culture. They were sure that they would find it in rural zones, where blacks and indians lived free from alien influences and ignorant of what occurred in Europe.

"Novelists and painters who fought to rehabilitate the indians, developed a healthy process searching for authenticity. This movevement, though, would adopt a borrowed cosmology; for an art truly in tune with reality could only develop the moment in which black and indian artists painted or wrote from their own perspective of the universe.

"The major achievements of this movement were made in Mexico, where a truly revolutionary mythology was created. Pre-colombian civilizations were rediscovered and American art was being nourished with new concepts of space and indian perspective. The murals of Diego Rivera show the imposition of a philosophy.

"Starting in 1920 many artists become political activists and their works become a "message". Some founded Latin American communist parties.

"For the left-wing artist, the demand for a "socialist realism" - in literature - and for a figurative technique - in painting -; the message to the masses and not to a selected audience, gradually became rigid commandment.

"The imposition of this social realism on the artists tended to produce a friction between those who defended the rights of avant-garde and those who beleived in art as a directly social function. When New York became the center of abstractionism, for some extreme left-wing figurative painters, abstractionism was synonymous of "imperialism".

"In this environment, and with clear exceptions, a new and revolutionary spirit of indigenousness developed in Latin America. A new school of art was developing which broke aristocratic conventions and portrayed a different figure whose artistic power lay in strong and honest features, rather than in soft faces and cushioned nudes.

"Thus, this artistic universe borders the limits of the Twentieth Century, and the veil which covered the Ecuadorian and Latin American popular cultures in mystery and silence begins to dissipate: slowly, as investigations are carried out, the contents of collective unconsciousness can be understood.

"The forms of American thought, cultural practices and traditional knowledge, surviving the strong penetration and sociocultural domination, influence occidental culture the same way in which occidental culture influences American culture."
Symbolism of colour

"A major part of cultural wealth is in the field of colour, of aesthetism and its symbolism.  Knowledge of the aesthetic values of indian culture leades to a better understanding of mestizo cultures.

"In handicraft it is common to find that mestizos, working together with indians, absorb from them aesthetic and chromatic combinations, their mythology and symbolism, and associate them in strong combinations which for other cultures may seem audacious and shocking.

"As conceived within these aesthetic schemes, the intense colours, green, blue, red, black, yellow, orange, purple, silver, white, shocking pink, are cheerful and young.  The soft colours:  grey, light brown, maroon, ligh blue, light pink, very soft greens and yellos are considered dirty, sad and old colours.

"In the past Century, while in the whole of Latin America an art which broke away from borrowed models developed, rural man marked the future of our culture in one of its major parts: colour.  A universe of colour was born and it began to show its effects.

"In this new colouring, lively and young colours may be combined with each other: green with red; purple with orange; yellow with black and blue.  Each combination produces different and unique meanings; to pair green with red means to give protection to plants against plagues and diseases.  A green, purple and orange garmnet it a party dress which summarizes happiness, abundance and gratitude.  In a wedding the women wear red and purple, this will ensure a happy and prosperous union, protected against diseases; the man wears black trousers and a red "poncho".

"All of these combinations - basic knowledge - are made according to their position in the rainbow.  The closest colours are the ones that match best.

"Colours may be classified into primary and secondary.  Primary colours are: green, purple, red, yellow-orange-gold, blue, black, silver white, shocking pink.  Secondary colours are known as dirty colours.  They are seldom used in clothing, textiles, painting or pottery.  They are the greys and browns.  A classification of colours according to their qualities - cheerful and young, sad and old - coincides with the classification of primary and secondary colours.  Finally, they may be further divided into warm and cold, feminine - used by women - and masculine - used by men.

"In this cosmology, the balance which helps to endure catastrophes, to overcome difficulties, is determined by the relation between heat and cold, male and female.  Combination of colour is made thinking that a cold one has to be next to a warm one, and that a male colour must be next to a female colour.

Aesthetic Conceptions
Time and Space

"The use of space in drawing and painting in European culture is laid out in two levels - length and width - which seek to produce the sense of volume.

"For the indian-mestizo culture, this sense lacks importance:  it starts from the point in which it considers that in nature all bodies have the same size and shape, even if they are near or far, up or down.  This aesthetic comes from the concept - perfectly true - that our eyes give us false information:  the blue colour we see away in the mountains is not real; the parallels which join in the horizon are deceitful; the size of a tree changes if we are near or far from it.  In indian-mestizo drawings and paintings, the size of figures has to do with the combination of several times in a same level: a bird is bigger than a house, a person bigger than a mountain, a town is smaller than an egg.
Time

"For European culture time has no importance in drawing and painting: what is painted is a portrait of an instant in which two or more temporalities do not fit.  In the indian-mestizo concept, however, time is a vital element for the composition of a painting.
 

"Indians and mestizos give their work a treatment of time through which, in a same drawing or painting, more or less complex situations happening in different spaces of time are described.  For example, inside a same piece of work there could be a representation of preparing the land, sowing, tilling, the harvest, the harvest feast and the havoc of the latter.  In the same way, a rooster is bigger than a church, a man the same size as a hat, a condor bigger than a mountain, a tree smaller than a nearby bird.

"This disproportion is explained if one understands that the smaller things were there before, long before; the smaller figures are in the past; the bigger ones come after, closer to the present or to the future.

"On the other hand, the position of the different elements to the right or to the left - has to do with time.  To the right is before and to the left is after.  The past, the present and the future can be represented in the same painting which shows how it is now and how it will in the future.

"Paintings in European culture are essentially of space, in indian culture they are of time.
Subject

"In European culture the subject is the focal point, which is re-enforced by the other elements of the work, subject or objects.  The composition, color, light are used to strengthen the central element which is the nucleus of importance.

"In indian-mestizo culture we observe two options: either a unique element is painted, as is the case of synthetic and abstract figures for textile designs and decoration of vases; or there is a composition of many subjects within the same drawing or painting, all of similar importance.  It is not posible to find a subject that predominates in a painting: they are all the main characters.  The composition of the subject, in European culture, is individualistic.  In the indian-mestizo, it is about the community.
Composition

"European culture has multiple possibilities for the composition of a picture: symmetrical, asymmetrical, by compensation of masses, by unit, by diversity, etc.

"Painters develop their own forms of composition and they all respond to a central conception: the balance of volumes, shapes and colours, where the main subject is the central point or the supporting point of that balance.

"The indian-mestizo conception, where the unique subject does not have in itself an individual value, makes its composition based on other aesthetic-cultural needs such as "time" and "continuity".

"Continuity is the closest word to the concept of the relation established between what happened, what is happening now and what will happen in the future.  These three periods, instituted by western civilization, in indian-mestizo cosmolgy have an intimate relationship: they form a unity.  Past events continue in force and mark what is happening now and what may happen later:  time is a spiral and is not constituted in the line as it is for European culture, in which the past is left behind and the future appears.

"In order to express this special conception of "time" and this concept proper of "continuity" two kinds of composition are used: in fringes (strips) and circular, or better, spiral.
Composition in Strips

"Composition in strips responds to the life of peasants where the land is prepared in beds, in parallels and symmetric structures.

"To describe, for example, how potatoes are produced, the first strip shows us the cultivated land where the seeds will beplaced.  The next strip, parallel, shows small plants, all very similar, placed at the same distance one from another.  Further up we see bigger plants and in bloom, also placed in symmetric distances.  The last strip shows us the harvest of potatoes.  Even when circular composition dominates, we can see a kind of parallel strips around the vertex.
Circular Composition

"This is a spiral in which every event is related one to another that belongs to the past, to the present or to the future, indistinctively.  The representation of several events is not lineal as in European culture.

"This concept of time has influence in the necessity of placing the elements with a logical sequence where situations of time are shown "before" and "after" around an axle which is the present.
 Before

"The figures that precede in time are placed to the left.  The closer the past is, the higher up the figures will be and they will start descending vertically from the axle of the present, as the past recedes.
After

"The figures which come after are placed to the right.  They go from bottom to top of the present or axle, according to the dimension of time, that is, according to an immediate, proximate or remote future.

Myths and Symbols

Myths

"When the Spanish invasion occurred, the indian culture was in transition from being essentially oral to being written.  This development, as we know, never took place.  The indians transmitted their values and concepts through an oral tradition, rich in myths and legends.  Practically every element of daily life, every phenomenon, belief, concept or rule is translated by means of a story, a tale or a myth.  And every myth is full of a symbolism which allows us to understand their culture better.
Symbols

"As myths are transmitted from generation to generation through oral language, the same way a series of values and meanings were also transmitted.  Animals, plants, mountains and natural phenomenons have become symbols for the indian-mestizo culture.

"Many are plants and fruits which have a special and deep meaning: "quishuar", "arupo", blueberry, "capuli", corn, coca leaves, cactus, "ayohuasca", "guanto", "quinua", potato, cocoa.

"Animal symbols are: hummingbirds, condors, parrots, "amarus", "llamas", pumas.  Butterflies are symbols of ancestors who are near or have come for a visit.

The Rainbow or the Flag of the Tahuantinsuyo (Inca Empire)

"According to the beliefs of the Incas, the Tahuantinsuyo - the four parts of the Whole - their flag was the rainbow, which contains all the colours and with them, all the symbols of colour.  The rainbow is a semi-god.  It is the son of the sun and serves him as messenger.  He brings the message of the sun to men.

"This knowledge, transmitted orally from generation to generation, help us understand more closely the semantic content of an artistic structure of traditional origin.  In the measuring, synthesis, systems, and symbolism of popular colour it is necessary to elaborate an order: a colouring, and thus translate it to its own language, the language which is inherent to it.

"This clarification situates us in a defined human, political and artistic position.  Today we have an expression of individual relationships, of language, of customs, of sensibility, of a complete aesthetic facing the universal aesthetic; non frivolous, non imported, but with values that are ours, authentic and not at all artificial.

"When leaving aside what we believed was sublime, we find ourselves before beauty: the most pure and innocent forms, primary feelings of the human being.

Gonzalo Endara Crow, 1989. El libro azul: The blue book 1988-1991. Saenz and Cia. Ltda. 1992. (pp.86-103)