"Woman of the volcano"
In one of Guayasamín's most disturbing images, he presents yet another vision of a beautiful and young Indian woman. Here, however, instead of depicting a sea-nymph playing in the waves or a woman bearing ripe fruit, he focuses on the solitary suffering of a young woman engulfed by flames. Her face in anguish and her hands held in prayer, this image may signal the oppression and extermination of the Indigenous peoples and their cultures. Her demise is inevitable and two-fold. Missionaries sought to Christianize the Indigenous "heathens" and "savages" and save them from the eternal fires of Hell. As part of this process, culture was destroyed or irrevocably changed. Guayasamín's again represents an ideal female nude, with high and round breasts and a hairless pubic area. Her pain and suffering are an indictment of the Europeans responsible for so many deaths during the early period of encounter and colonization of the Americas.
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