Gonzalo Endara Crow, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetGonzalo Endara Crow
Ecuadorian artist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Bucay, Ecuador, Ecuador
About Gonzalo Endara Crow
- Gonzalo Endara Crow (1936-1996, Bucay, Ecuador) was a Latin American writer and painter.From an early age he was very interested in art and as a young man he studied painting at the Central University in Quito.
- Endara Crow's work took on a distinct style early in his career that stayed with him throughout his life.
- Ecuadorian geography and the bright colors used by indigenous artisans in their work were two major influences that penetrated Endara Crow's work for his entire career.
- Gonzalo Endara Crow is considered one of the most important Latin American painters of the second half of the 20th century.
- His work was universal and offered an aesthetic perspective of Andean culture and people. His most recognized painting is "El Tren Volador" (The Flying Train).
- As a child, Endara Crow was amazed by trains since his grandfather worked at the railroad; this became an inspiration for his masterpiece, in which he depicts a flying train -hence the title- that blends into a colorful mountainous landscape.
- Another common surreal motif in his paintings was raining bells or spheres as in his Untitled work dated July 29, 1988.
- Endara was also a sculptor, and sculpted two important monuments in SangolquÃ, Ecuador.
- These two monuments are "El Choclo" and "El ColibrÃ".
- Some of his pieces encompass elements of painting and sculpture both such as "El Cerro de la Iglesia" (1985) an acrylic work enclosed inside a wood portal. Various art historians and critics have referred to his work as magical realism, a term often used when speaking of twentieth-century Latin American literature.
- Just as in magical realist texts, paintings by Endara Crow seek to expand the categories of what is real so as to encompass myth.
- Magic and other extraordinary phenomena in nature - all which are excluded by European culture - find their place in Endara Crow's painting. Magical realism in painting can be distinguished by the way in which reality and fantasy are blended.
- Any distinction between the two is erased through the combination of fantasy elements and mythology with otherwise unrealistic fiction.
- As in the magical realist texts of Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, Gonzalo Endara Crow's paintings weave in fantastic elements with deadpan presentation transforming the unlikely into certain reality with a subtle mechanism: the treatment of light.
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