The Ecuadorean painter Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999) is the least known of the pioneers of Latin American Modernism. Fortunately for aficionados of Latin American art, an exhibition of his work is on display at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín is the artist's first U.S. retrospective in more than half a century and goes a long way toward familiarizing American museumgoers with his work.

Organized by Vanderbilt University, the exhibition consists of 80 paintings, drawings and prints from the collection of the Guayasamín Foundation in Quito, Ecuador. It includes examples of the three major themes in Guayasamín's prolific output: Maternal love and pain; empathy for the oppressed, especially for the oppression of indigenous peoples, and the horrors of violence.

FAU galleries director W. Rod Faulds notes that ''the exhibition provides a great introduction to modern Latin American art. Guayasamín's modern figurative expressionism is something that many people are not familiar with. The power and spirit that his work projects comes out of his own life and experience.'' Although Guayasamín's artwork is highly political, ''it also transcends politics,'' Faulds says. ``At its basic level, it is about human suffering. In its stronger moments, Guayasamín's art displays horrific, even shocking imagery.''

In the 1940s, Guayasamín's work was shown alongside that of other Latin American artists, such as the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The Organization of American States gave him a retrospective in Washington, D.C., in 1955 -- his last major exhibition in this country until the current show.

SOCIAL THEMES

Guayasamín shared the leftist politics and indigenous themes of the Mexican artists, but, rather than dwelling on their social realism, his work reflects Picasso's style, particularly that of Guernica. It is characterized by strong draftsmanship and a predominance of black-and-white tones. That strong graphic style and Guayasamín's depiction of the ethnic diversity of Ecuador brought him international recognition as ''the best South American painter'' at the 1957 Bienal de Sao Paulo.

The fact that the artist is being shown here after such a long hiatus is arguably as significant as the artworks, the best of which are difficult to look at. ''My painting is to hurt,'' Guayasamín observed, ``to scratch and hit inside people's hearts. To show what Man does against Man.''

That harsh attitude is amply on display at FAU. Although the exhibition includes portraits, still lifes, Quito cityscapes and late work from the 1980s depicting maternal love and childhood in what Guayasamín called La edad de tenura (The Age of Tenderness), the large-scale works from La era de ira (The Age of Wrath) dominate.

Foremost among them is a the exhibition's centerpiece, the lifesize triptych Los torturados (The Tortured), painted in 1976-1977. Though not fixed in time and place, the work was inspired by the torture and murder of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara after the military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973. With its strong black-and-white figures against a red ground, it becomes almost a medieval crucifixion altarpiece promising redemption for the oppressed and downtrodden.

Equally impressive -- confrontational -- are the multi-paneled The Wait, The Cry and Meeting at the Pentagon. Guayasamín's preoccupation with Latin America's history of violence and colonialism is encapsulated in a mid-career painting from 1957, El toro y el cóndor, in which the bull and condor of the title symbolize, respectively, indigenous people and their conquerors. Early works like Dead Children #11 and late portraits of such personalities as musician Paco de Lucia and Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú share the technical skills of Guayasamín's more overtly political works but lack their emotional punch.

RETURN TO COUNTRY

During a visit to the FAU gallery, Saskia Guayasamín, the artist's daughter and vice president of the Guayasamín Foundation, said that the exhibit's six-city U.S. tour represents a return to this country for the artist who had lived in New York in the 1950s and died in Baltimore while seeking medical treatment. More important, she said, the exhibition gives students and other visitors a view of the wartimes and the struggles for human rights that Guayasamín lived through unfettered by hemispheric politics.

Faulds says that the exhibit underscores the university's connection to Ecuador and the Andes, which includes an archaeological dig, study-abroad programs and a conference on Andean and Amazonian studies. FAU has also scheduled lectures, concerts and poetry readings and a film series to place Guayasamín's work within the broader context of contemporary Ecuadorean culture.

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