Fundación Guayasamín

The Fundación Guayasamín in Quito showcases the life and art of Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín, featuring his paintings, sculptures, and extensive collection of pre-Columbian artifacts.

Planning your visit

Oswaldo Guayasamin was Ecuador's major twentieth-century artist, and his work is unusually direct: angular, elongated figures with enormous hands and anguished faces, painted in response to poverty, dictatorship, torture and war in Latin America and beyond. The Age of Wrath, his long series on twentieth-century atrocity, is the core of it.

The foundation he established in Quito holds his paintings and sculpture alongside his own substantial collections of pre-Columbian and colonial religious art, which he gathered obsessively and which visibly informed his own figures. His house is preserved, with his studio and the tree under which he is buried.

Adjacent is the Capilla del Hombre, the Chapel of Man, the monumental space he designed as the culmination of his work and which was completed after his death in 1999 — a building dedicated to the suffering and endurance of the peoples of the Americas, with large-scale works installed as a single environment. It is the more powerful half of the visit and should not be skipped.

The site sits on a hillside above Quito with views over the city. Allow two hours. Bookable options combine it with historic centre and cacao experiences. Current availability is listed below.