Egas, Camilo Alejandro (1895–1962)

Camilo Alejandro Egas (b. 1895; d. 1962), Ecuadorian artist. Egas was born in Quito and attended the Academy of Arts in that city. A disciple of Paul Bar and Víctor Puiz, he won first prize in a national competition in celebration of Ecuadorian independence (1909). With the aid of an Ecuadorian government grant he studied at the Academy of Rome (1918) and the following year continued his studies at the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. On another trip to Europe, he met Picasso in Paris, where he studied at the Colorrossi Academy (1922). Egas exhibited at the Salon des Indépendents and Salon d'Automme (Paris, 1924–1925). His expressionist paintings of Ecuadorian Indians frequently depict women in mourning or tragic instances (Desolation). In 1929 he received an appointment to teach painting at the New School for Social Research and in 1935 became the director of the school's painting department, a position he held until his death. In 1938 he collaborated on a mural project for the Ecuadorian Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. Egas was influenced by the surrealist exiles in New York in the 1940s and by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco. He died in New York.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arte Ecuatoriano, vol. 2 (1976), pp. 246-247.

Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820–1980 (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Landázuri Camacho, Carlos, and Adriana Grijalva de Dávila. Museo Camilo Egas. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, 2003.

                                              Marta Garsd