Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Ecuador also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (621 mi) west of the mainland. The capital is Quito.
Quito is the capital of Ecuador, the country's most populous city, and at an elevation of 2,850 metres (9,350 ft) above sea level, it is the second highest official capital city in the world, and the closest to the equator. It is located in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains.
Loja, formerly Loxa and fully City of the Immaculate Conception of Loja, is the capital of Ecuador's Loja Province. It is located in the Cuxibamba valley in the south of the country, sharing borders with the provinces of Zamora-Chinchipe and El Oro, and with Peru in the south. Loja holds a rich tradition in the arts, and for this reason is known as the Music and Cultural Capital of Ecuador. The city is home to two major universities.
Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo was a medical pioneer, writer and lawyer of mestizo origin in colonial Ecuador. Although he was a notable scientist and writer, he stands out as a polemicist who inspired the separatist movement in Quito. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in colonial Ecuador. He was Quito's first journalist and hygienist.
The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo is a tract of land owned by the prefecture of the province of Pichincha, Ecuador. It is located at San Antonio parish of the canton of Quito, 26 km (16 mi) north of the center of Quito. The grounds contain the Monument to the Equator, which highlights the exact location of the Equator and commemorates the eighteenth century Franco-Spanish Geodesic Mission which fixed its approximate location; they also contain the Museo Etnográfico Mitad del Mundo, Ethnographic Museum Middle of the Earth, a museum about the indigenous people ethnography of Ecuador.
Luis Enrique Tábara is a master Ecuadorian painter and teacher representing a whole Hispanic pictorial and artistic culture.
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.
Judith Gutiérrez Moscoso was an Ecuadorian painter who lived and worked in Ecuador and Mexico. Along with other female artists, she formed part of the Guayaquil School for Contemporary Plastic Arts and was active in militant groups such as the Union of the Women of Guayas, a precursor to Ecuadorian feminist organizations.
Estuardo Maldonado is a Latin American sculptor and painter inspired by the Constructivist movement. Maldonado is a member of VAN, the group of Informalist painters founded by Enrique Tábara. Other members of VAN included, Aníbal Villacís, Luis Molinari, Hugo Cifuentes, León Ricaurte and Gilberto Almeida. Maldonado's international presence is largely due to his participation in over a hundred exhibits outside of Ecuador.
Xavier Blum Pinto is an Ecuadorian artist. From 1974 to 1976 he studied architecture at the Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil, in Ecuador. In 1981, obtained his MA in Fine Arts from the Universitė of Paris VIII, France.
Ciudad Colonial is the historic central neighborhood of Santo Domingo and the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the of the Americas. It has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It is also known as Zona Colonial or more colloquially as "La Zona". The Ciudad Colonial is located on the west bank of the Ozama River, which bisects the city. It covers 1.06 km2 (0.41 sq mi) bounded by a walled perimeter.
Fernando Jurado Noboa is an Ecuadorian psychiatrist, historian and genealogist.
Juan Martín Cueva Armijos is an Ecuadorian documentary film director and the director of the Filmfestival "Cero Latitud" in Quito. His documentary film "Where the poles meet" won the Best Documentary at the IX Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia in Chile and at the Brouillon d’un reve de la Scam in Paris in 1999.
Eduardo Estrella Aguirre was an Ecuadorian doctor and researcher who published Flora Huayaquilensis: The Botanical Expedition of Juan Tafalla 1799-1808.
Instituto Nacional Mejía is a public secondary educational institution of Quito. It was founded on June 1, 1897 by Eloy Alfaro Delgado, then president of Ecuador.
Nelson Estupiñán Bass (1912–2002) was born in Sua, a city in the predominantly Afro-Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador. He was first homeschooled by his mother before traveling to the capital city of Quito where he graduated from Escuela Superior Juan Montalvo with a degree in public accounting in 1932. Bass identified with the Communist Party during this time and in 1934 had the opportunity to publish two of his poems in the socialist diary La Tierra.
Manuel Chili – known as Caspicara – was an Ecuadorian sculptor who exemplified the Quito School movement of the 18th century Andes. His major religious works, characterized by polychromed wood sculptures in an elegant Spanish Baroque style, are preserved in the Quito Cathedral and the Church of San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, and in Popayán, Colombia. His work was rediscovered in 1791 and championed by Eugenio Espejo, then the country's leading intellectual.
The City Museum is a museum in the colonial center of Quito, Ecuador. It is located on Garcia Moreno Street, between Morales and Rocafuerte.
Ecuador is a country with vast natural and cultural wealth. The diversity of its four regions has resulted in hundreds of thousands of species of flora and fauna. It has about 1640 species of birds. The species of butterflies line the 4,500, the 345 reptiles, 358 amphibians and 258 mammals, among others. Ecuador is considered one of the 17 countries where the greatest biodiversity of the planet is concentrated. Most of its flora and fauna live in 26 areas protected by the State. It also offers historical attractions such as Quito, food and a variety of cultures and traditions.
