Magic realism or magical realism is a style of literary fiction and art. It paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly found in novels and dramatic performances. Despite including certain magic elements, it is generally considered to be a different genre from fantasy because magical realism uses a substantial amount of realistic detail and employs magical elements to make a point about reality, while fantasy stories are often separated from reality. Magical realism is often seen as an amalgamation of real and magical elements that produces a more inclusive writing form than either literary realism or fantasy.
Quito, formally San Francisco de Quito, is the capital of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its urban area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes, at an elevation of 2,850 m (9,350 ft), making it the second-highest capital city in the world.
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions. While the movement's characteristics vary from nation to nation, it almost always utilizes a form of descriptive or critical realism.
James Gurney is an American artist and author known for his illustrated book series Dinotopia, which is presented in the form of a 19th-century explorer's journal from an island utopia cohabited by humans and dinosaurs.
Francisco Oller was a Puerto Rican painter. Oller is the only Latin American painter to have played a role in the development of Impressionism. One of the most distinguished transatlantic painters of his day, Oller helped transform painting in the Caribbean.
Post-expressionism is a term coined by the German art critic Franz Roh to describe a variety of movements in the post-war art world which were influenced by expressionism but defined themselves through rejecting its aesthetic. Roh first used the term in an essay in 1925, "Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism", to contrast to Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub's "New Objectivity", which more narrowly characterized these developments within German art. Though Roh saw "post-expressionism" and "magic realism" as synonymous, later critics characterized distinctions between magic realism and other artists initially identified by Hartlaub and have also pointed out other artists in Europe who had different stylistic tendencies but were working within the same trend.
Oswaldo Guayasamín was an Ecuadorian painter and sculptor of Kichwa and Mestizo heritage.
Colleen Browning was an Anglo-American realist and magical realist painter.
Eduardo Kingman Riofrío was an Ecuadorian artist. He is considered one of Ecuador's greatest artists of the 20th century, among the art circles of other master artists such as Oswaldo Guayasamín and Camilo Egas.
Aníbal Villacís was a master painter from Ecuador who used raw earthen materials such as clay and natural pigments to paint on walls and doors throughout his city when he could not afford expensive artist materials. As a teenager, Villacís taught himself drawing and composition by studying and recreating the illustrated ad posters for bullfights in Quito. In 1952, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, former President of Ecuador, discovered Villacís and offered him a scholarship to study in Paris.
Camilo Egas was an Ecuadorian master painter and teacher, who was also active in the United States and Europe. Camilo Egas was married in Paris 1927 to Dancer and artist Margarita Gibbons. Camilo Egas museo illustrates a self portrait of the artist of 1946 that is on the cover of a pamphlet published by them then used for a book Jan 2003 edition by del Banco central del Ecuador
Jorge Velarde is a Contemporary Latin American painter from Ecuador. Velarde has been drawing and painting since he was a child. At the age of 15 Velarde knew that he was meant to be a painter.
An atelier is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or visual art released under the master's name or supervision.
Classical Realism is an artistic movement in the late-20th and early 21st century in which drawing and painting place a high value upon skill and beauty, combining elements of 19th-century neoclassicism and realism.
Enrique Gil Gilbert was an Ecuadorian novelist, journalist, poet, and a high-ranking member of the Communist Party of Ecuador.
Realism in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative and supernatural elements. The term is often used interchangeably with naturalism, although these terms are not synonymous. Naturalism, as an idea relating to visual representation in Western art, seeks to depict objects with the least possible amount of distortion and is tied to the development of linear perspective and illusionism in Renaissance Europe. Realism, while predicated upon naturalistic representation and a departure from the idealization of earlier academic art, often refers to a specific art historical movement that originated in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1848. With artists like Gustave Courbet capitalizing on the mundane, ugly or sordid, realism was motivated by the renewed interest in the common man and the rise of leftist politics. The Realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.
Demetrio Aguilera Malta was an Ecuadorian writer, director, painter, and diplomat. He was a member of the Guayaquil Group of the 1930s, who used social realism in their writings. He used magical realism in his masterpiece Siete lunas y siete serpientes (1970), which was translated into English as Seven Serpents and Seven Moons by Gregory Rabassa in 1979.
Elmar René Rojas Azurdia, practiced as an architect before studying art in Guatemala, Spain, France and Italy. He funded the Ministry of Culture of Guatemala in Central America, and he was the subject of many exhibitions in cities around the world. His art is seen as expressive of "magical realism" or "wonderful reality." His international awards include the Gran Premio Iberoamericano "Cristobal Colón," presented in Madrid, Spain in 1989. Rojas, one of Latin America's most important artists, was also renowned as a great communicator of culture.
Leonardo Tejada was an Ecuadorian painter whose work was known for its Social Realism and Expressionism.
Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work. Realist works depicted people of all classes in situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions. Realism was primarily concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world. The popularity of such "realistic" works grew with the introduction of photography—a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce representations which look objectively real.
