traveling abroad he painted local landscapes and Indian fiesta scenes. In Europe he became a convert to mysticism, and upon his return to Quito he did a huge painting of Our Lady of Mercies. Another artist independent of Mexican influence was Giro Pazmino (b. 1897). He did a number of paintings, but he specialized in designing stained-glass windows for public buildings in Quito, an activity in which Mideros also engaged. From 1924 to 1927 Pazmino was director of the National Center for Fine Arts. For the "indigenist" generation born between 1900 and 1920, the paintings of Mideros and Pazmifio's windows provided a national counterweight to the influence of Mexican Muralism. When the May Salon of Ecuadorian Writers and Artists was inaugurated in 1939, Camilo Egas (1897-1962) had already introduced the Indian into Ecuadorian art, in broad canvases in which magnified and idealized human figures stand out in a broadly rhythmic setting. The Harvest provides a good example of his style. Three of the painters who participated in the 1939 Salon were to become leading exponents of art on "indigenist" themes: Oswaldo Guayasamin (p. 46), Eduardo Kingman, and Diogenes Paredes. Between 1940, the year in which Jose Velasco Ibarra, who had been the leading political figure in the country since 1933, was exiled to Buenos Aires, and 1945, the year in which the famous "Hunger March" took place, Ecuadorian "indigenist" painting took definite shape. The outstanding figure was Eduardo Kingman (b. 1913) (p. 45). In 1939-40 he worked on the Ecuadorian Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, and in 1940 he produced a series of paintings on themes relating to the Spanish Civil War. In 1942 he exhibited at the Capiscara Gallery, the movement's unofficial headquarters, Los abagos, a painting monumental in spirit, in which the suffering of the Indians is conveyed with epic sweep and a strong sense of rhythm. The same qualities can be noted in The Stretchers, in which the encounter between enslaved Indians and an overseer mounted on an enormous horse and brandishing a whip is rendered with great vividness. In these compositions, in Diogenes Paredes' (b. 1915) Earthenware Jugs, in which the figure of the Indian assumes massive proportions, and Dancers of Saquisili by Bolivar Franco Mena (b. 1913) one can see the influence of Diego Rivera's well-rounded subjects. Originality, however, derives from the monumental tone of the compositions and their markedly rhythmic character. Paredes, the founder of a trade union named for David Alfaro Siqueiros, was awarded first prize by the National House of Culture in 1945. Oswaldo Guayasamin (b. 1919) embarked upon a path different from that of his companions, finding inspiration in the devices used by Picasso in Guernica. He produced in 1945 the first of his great cycles, the 103 paintings known as Huacaynan (the Trail of Tears). In 1948 he received the National Prize for Painting and thereafter was considered the leading figure in Ecuadorian art. His social painting reached its high point between 1952 and 1967, in the series The Age of Wrath, based on themes taken from Frantz Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth. By that time, however—just as in Mexico—the standard line taken by Ecuadorian "indigenist" art had been rejected by the following generation, as represented by Villacis, Tabara, Viteri, and others, whose concern with matters
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40 • MEXICAN MURALISM