On view October 31 2024
In the Age of the Gods:
The Ancestral Footprint of Enrique Tábara
Pre-Columbian cultures inspired exciting periods in the art of Enrique Tábara (1930-2021). Today, the AMA | Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States (OAS) exhibits this testimony of how in his youth and at the end of his life Tábara established an unbreakable connection with his ancestral past. His origins lie within this past, and it involves him.
In 1964 José Gómez Sicre invited him to exhibit at the Pan American Union (PAU, now the OAS) in Washington D.C., through a letter to which the artist responded, accepting immediately. That epistolary exchange starts this exhibition.
It gives account of the time when Tábara was preparing to return to his native country, Ecuador, after nine years in Europe. In those years he was aligned with Spanish Informalism. Then, progressively, his work—rich in texture—came to incorporate symbolic references linked to his origins.
At the beginning of the sixties, an intellectual event, both mystical and esoteric, occurred in his mind, prompting him in 1961 to write a manifesto. The document is shown publicly, in this exhibition, for the first time.
It becomes the voice of Tábara. It warns us that we will face surreal images that challenge us before we can ask: what do they want to tell us?
Tábara feels an affinity with ancestral deities, and he is convinced of the presence of extraterrestrial beings: intermediaries who, since ancient times, transmit advanced knowledge to man.
This is also the time when Tábara painted Tiahuanaco, exhibited sixty years ago at the PAU, and which now once again occupies a central place at the AMA. The work revalues the pre-Columbian worldview.
After exhibiting in Washington, back in his homeland, Tábara continued to work tirelessly. In his last years he produced the Colección Latinoamérica body of works. He wanted to exhibit them abroad, but left this world before he could do so, leaving a reflection about his latest paintings. He stated: this is a tribute to our ancestral cultures.
By putting Tábara's two creative phases in dialog, temporarily distanced within his plastic production, we discover his persistent desire: to redeem the timeless pre-Columbian symbolic construction.
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