The color lithographs by Ecuadorian modernist Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999) featured in the following pages draw upon visual motifs and historical traditions related to America and its discovery. These prints illustrate a 1984 abridged edition of sixteenth-century Italian humanist and Spanish royal chronicler Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo (On the New World, 1530), which was published in commemoration of the 500 year anniversary (1492-1992) of Columbus's first voyage to the Americas. The original book, written in the form of eight Latin letters between 1493 and 1525, was undoubtedly chosen for this project because it is the earliest European history of the New World. The Decades draws heavily on first-hand accounts of the Americas, including letters from European explorers like Columbus; reports submitted to the Council of the Indies in Spain; and interviews conducted by Martyr himself. Considered to be one of the most accurate and detailed early histories of America, this text provided some of the first descriptions of American plants and animals. It also gave information about the Taino peoples and their customs and rites. The early "decades" cover the Columbian voyages, while later decades address the Spanish conquest of America.
Seminal writings like Martyr's from the Age of Discovery have often been used by Latin American modernists as a source of artistic inspiration, and Martyr's text clearly provided a wellspring of pictorial motifs for Guayasamín's imagery. For Guayasamín, a native of Ecquador and a strong advocate of Indigenous rights, the experiences and suffering of Americans 500 years in the past resonated on a highly personal level. Guayasamín's lithographs in the 1984 book may be divided into two groups: idealized and colorful images of an Eden-like New World and its peoples, and harsh, powerfully expressive black and white images that document the Spanish Conquest and the suffering of the Indigenous people. The stylistic vocabulary of these prints makes them easily recognizable as signatures works of Guayasamín. The text that accompanies the images featured in this exhibition describe the earliest "decades" of exploration, which focus on the Columbian voyages to the West Indies and South America and emphasize the beauty and fecundity of the newly discovered lands and their people. Each of his images serves as an illustrative complement to Martyr's account, providing the contemporary reader with an intriguing, innovative representation upon which to project his or her own feelings and beliefs about these important but traumatic events of the past.
