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Guerrero, Juan Agustín
(b ?Quito, 1818; d ?Quito, 1880). Ecuadorean painter and musician. He was involved in the foundation of the Escuela Miguel de Santiago in Quito in 1849 (transformed in 1852 into the Escuela Democratica Miguel de Santiago), and he won third prize for his painting Modesty (Quito, Mus. Fund. Hallo) when the school held the first public art exhibition in Ecuador. He criticized the dependence of Ecuadorean art on Spanish and other European models, and he fought for the liberation of oppressed social classes and particularly of the indigenous people, as well as for individual creativity and the autonomy of the artist from the ecclesiastical powers that remained dominant in Ecuador at that time. Stylistically, Guerrero represented the transition from Quito’s colonial Baroque style to Romanticism. He introduced watercolour painting into Ecuador and used the medium to illustrate, criticize and satirize leading figures of the time. His album of drawings and watercolours of landscapes, personalities and customs of the period (c. 1860–70; Quito, Mus. Fund. Hallo) constitutes an important document: the portrayal of regional customs and people (Costumbrismo) occurred rather late in Ecuador and was a product of the contact between Ecuadorean intellectuals and foreign travellers and scientists interested in the ethnography of indigenous groups in the mountains and jungle.
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