We just returned from an eye-opening trip to Ecuador and the Amazon. It has brought welcomed inspiration to my work and filled my head with new shapes and historical perspectives previously undiscovered. I am still grappling with all that we saw and did.
Of particular note is the very early pre-Columbian art with simple cubist forms that was exhibited at the Casa del Alabado Museum housed in a beautifully renovated 17th century building. Ecuador has a long tradition of Art (with meanings buried in religion and spirituality) that drives the culture. It surrounds the environment and is pervasive in daily life, from the foods to the ecosystem. There is such a study in contrasts from the old and the new to the corporate and the primitive. Somehow these ideologies find a common path to exist peacefully side-by-side, perhaps more so than we are used to in the United States. Historically it was not always so, with the early Spanish conquest and the continuing struggle of the Indigenous peoples. Now the mix produces a culture and people that is a powerful blend of traditions, religions, and art.
Of particular note is the very early pre-Columbian art with simple cubist forms that was exhibited at the Casa del Alabado Museum housed in a beautifully renovated 17th century building. Ecuador has a long tradition of Art (with meanings buried in religion and spirituality) that drives the culture. It surrounds the environment and is pervasive in daily life, from the foods to the ecosystem. There is such a study in contrasts from the old and the new to the corporate and the primitive. Somehow these ideologies find a common path to exist peacefully side-by-side, perhaps more so than we are used to in the United States. Historically it was not always so, with the early Spanish conquest and the continuing struggle of the Indigenous peoples. Now the mix produces a culture and people that is a powerful blend of traditions, religions, and art.
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