Aníbal Villacís

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Aníbal Villacís (b. 1927, Ambato, Ecuador) is a master painter from Ecuador who used raw earthen materials such as clay and natural pigments to paint on walls and doors throughout his city when he could not afford expensive artist materials. As a teenager, Villacís taught himself drawing and composition by studying and recreating the illustrated ad posters for bullfights in Quito. In 1952, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, former President of Ecuador, discovered Villacís and offered him a scholarship to study in Paris.

After living in Paris for almost a year, Villacís never grew accustomed to the language, so he wrote to the Ecuadorian Minister of Education requesting to transfer his studies to Madrid. Villacís felt more comfortable in Spain and lived there for six years. While living in Madrid, Villacís was introduced to the Informalismo or Informalist Movement, specifically, Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, and Modest Cuixart, who quickly began to influence his work. Villacís was a co-founder of VAN, the Informalist artist group that embraced Informalism while searching for new modern aesthetics inspired by Pre-Colombian art (also referred to as Ancestralism or The Ancestralists). Other members of VAN included, Enrique Tábara, Estuardo Maldonado, Luis Molinari, Hugo Cifuentes and Gilberto Almeida.

Villacís is mostly well known for his series called, Filigranas (Filigree), which he started in the early sixties. The Filigranas series were typically mixed media on masonite or wood with the addition of any combination of the following applied: marble dust, sand, metal, plaster, paint, gold and/or silver leaf to create new modern aesthetics influenced by his Pre-Colombian ancestors. Villacís will often layer many different colors of paint and then scrape some away to reveal the different colors of the layers below, giving the impression of an ancient sacred relic that has aged with time. The addition of silver and gold in Villacís' work is reminiscent of the art of the Baroque period, where the addition of these metals was often used to create a divine experience.

Villacis' passion for the art and culture of the Pre-Colomiban period is very obvious in his work. He feels it is the beginning of life in his continent. In Pre-Colombian art there is evidence, through images and forms, of a remote life; an insight into total wisdom and enchantment. A life colored with rituals, habits and incarnated customs, signs and symbols, magic and religion through the myth. The images are constituted by the emotional, sensible perception of vitality; and the forms represent an order of the imagination and thought, governed by a rigorous construction that was built by the creative men of prehistoric times.

For a period in the seventies, Villacís put his famous Filigranas series on hold to focus on painting faces of Quito's ghetto children to highlight their "insecurities, uncertainty, and premature old age". Villacís has also been known to paint landscapes, cityscapes and bullfighting scenes. Villacís has always been intreged by bullfighting. He would regularly attend bullfights in both Spain and Ecuador.

Internationally, Villacís has exhibited his work throughout the corners of Latin America: Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Brazil, El Salvador, as well as the United States and Europe.

[edit] Selected Exhibitions

• 1969 - X Biennial de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• 1971 - Altamira Gallery, Quito, Ecuador
• 1973 - XII Biennial de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• 1978 - I Biennial Latin Americana de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• Forma Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
• 2004 - I National Fair of Plastic Arts, River Basin, Ecuador.
• 2004 - Encuentro Tres Generaciones, Paintings by Villacís, his son and his granddaughter, Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 2004 - III Biennial of Inter-American Painting, Colombia.
• 2004 - Retrospectiva Mes de las Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2005 - The Ancestralismo, Villacís, Tábara, Viteri and Maldonado, Museum of the Central Bank, River Basin, Ecuador.
• 2005 - Pinturas de Villacís, Galeria Todo Arte, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 2006 - Quito: The City, The Paintings, Itchimbía Cultural Center, Quito, Ecuador.
• Permanent Collection - Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo (MAAC), Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• Permanent Collection - National Museum of the Central Bank of Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador.
• Permanent Collection - Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States (OAS), Washington, D.C., USA.
• Permanent Collection - Pat Clark Gallery, Ellsworth College, Iowa Falls, Iowa, USA.

[edit] Awards and Prizes

• 1956 - Prize Acquisition Museum of Colonial Art, Quito, Ecuador.
• 1960 - First Prize Mariano Aguilera in Quito, Ecuador.
• 1965 - First Prize Mariano Aguilera for the work, Incaico, Quito, Ecuador.
• 1966 - Second Prize, Salón Bolivariano de Cali, Cali, Colombia
• 1969 - First Prize, Salón de la Casa de la Cultura de Guayaquil, for the work, Calendario Precolombino, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 1970 - First Prize in XIII the Hall October, Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 1978 - Decoration of Artistic Merit in the Order of Commander, Ecuador.
• 2005 - National Prize of Culture, "Eugenio Espejo Prize", presented by the president of Ecuador, Alfredo Palacio.

[edit] References

• Sullivan, Edward J., Latin American Art in the Twentieth-Century. Phaidon Press Limited; London, 1996.
• Barnitz, Jacqueline, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. University of Texas Press; Austin, TX, 2001.
• Latin American Research Review, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 1972), pp. 180-182.
• Municipalidad de Guayaquil - www.guayaquil.gov.ec/data/salondejulio/antecedentes.htm