Camilo Egas
[2] During the initial opening stages of the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Quito, in the early 1900s, the school began implementing a curriculum in correlation to the Ecuadorian's efforts to create a modern national identity.
The school made efforts to send its students to study abroad in Europe and hired foreign artists to serve as teachers such as French Impressionist Paul Bar and Italian modernist sculptor Luigi Casadio.
Hence, incorporating Ecuador's cultural roots into the student's artwork and in turn, modifying the traditional costumbrismo approach by making Indigenous Ecuadorian art more relevant.
It was during this time that Egas first experienced exposure to the revolutionary focus of Native American themes present in the Escuela de Bellas Artes.
[3] In his decision to combine his globally acquired artisanship, Egas thus gained prestige by elevating the depiction of the native population in a refined aesthetic manner.
Other indigenists artists include Diógenes Paredes, Bolívar Mena Franco, Pedro León, Eduardo Kingman, and Oswaldo Guayasamín.
Ecuadorian author Pablo Palacio published his short story Un hombre muerto a puntapiés [es] in Hélice magazine in 1926.
Greet surmises that the unsuccessful artistic endeavors, as well as his recent marriage to the North American dancer Margaret Gibbons perhaps encouraged Egas to move overseas; he subsequently established himself in Greenwich Village, New York.
Egas thus began painting the affected American workers and the homeless, subsequently accepting the recognition and the label of a social realist.
The Museo Jijon y Caamano de Arqueologia y Arte Colonial in Quito commissioned him to paint a series of work in oils exploring Andean Indian life.
Multiple conflicting artistic and commercial interests, cultural versus social ideologies, and an overall lack of delegatory participation hindered the mural's intended meaning and timely production.
Ecuadorian audiences perceived the mural as an unacceptable representation of their national identity by portraying their country as an impoverished indigenous state.
While the American audience viewed Egas's attempt at symbolism as confusing and losing the effectiveness of Indigenism as a tool of social awareness.
[2] Nevertheless, the resulting criticism eventually led Camilo Egas to abandon Indigenism in its entirety, never to show his previous works in public galleries again.
[5] Subsequently, the mural was forgotten and consequently destroyed amid the rising military tension between Ecuador and Peru, ultimately culminating into a full-fledged war by 1941.
However, before the growing political pressures, Egas would use this opportunity to establish transnational scholarships for other Ecuadorian artists to study in The New School of Social Research in New York City.
[5] From 1927 to the end of his life, Egas resided in New York City, but occasionally lived in Spain and Italy, and made numerous trips back to Ecuador.
