Gustavo Toaquiza
Ecuador
The indigenous artists of Tigua, Ecuador, are renowned for their colorful paintings depicting life high in the Andes mountains of rural Ecuador. The paintings, all done on sheep hide, reflect the history, festivals and legends of a people whose traditions date back to the pre-Inca times. Tigua is a region of small farming communities, southwest of Quito. Most people in Tigua are farmers who herd sheep and llamas and cultivate a variety of crops in a apatchwork of steep, windswept fields that cover the mountain slopes and valleys. They speak Quichua, the language of the Inca. Although they have acquired many modern ways and accoutrements, their customes, and their paintings, still reflect their ancient traditions.
Traditionally, the Quichua, people of the highlands, decorated drums and masks for festivals and fiestas. Painting on a flat surface is a relatively recent development. This art form began in the early 1970s when Julio Toaquiza encouraged by a Quito art dealer, began painting pictures of daily life using sheep hide stretched over a wood frame and a brush made from chicken feathers. Over the years, Julio has encouraged his children as well as many others in Tigua to paint. Despite their lack of formal training, the artists of Tigua have gained renown throughout Ecuador and beyond for the vitality of their paintings and detailed rendering of nature and traditional life in the remote highlands.
Tigua paintings, many of which also have decorative frames painted by the artists, typically depict scenes of village life, festivals, shamanic tiruals as well as historical and political themes.
In recent years, Tigua art has been shown at major exhibitions at the OAS in Washington, DC, the Univesrity of California Hearst Museum, the Museum of Man in San Diego, California, and UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. As the appreciation and nrenown of this art spreads, so does the stature and respect for these artists of the Andes and their colorful representations of indigenous life in the past and in the present.
For more information about Tigua, see the web page www.mip.berkeley.edu/Tigua or www.nativeweb.org/hosted/Tigua, or contact Arts of Tigua, a not-for-profit organization and the official representative of the Artists Association of Tigua-Chimbacucho. Email: tiguaart@aol.com
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