Members of the International Jury of the II Biennale of Guayaquil
27-Marzo-2010

1.-THEO CONSTANTE - Ecuador.

(Guayaquil, 1934) moves from figuration – which is a rather restless
sounding out of formal and chromatic possibilities – to an informalism, in which he has definitively made himself at home. An abstract expression, rich in color and light, in which Spanish informalism á la Viola has weighed in, and which has striven for personality and depth in an American substrate.

“One could consider his work within abstractionism, but under different influences… He studied in the School of Fine Arts (where he was later a Professor) and in the San Fernando Academy in Madrid. He has obtained prizes from the Guayaquil Municipality (1955); the July Salon (1960-1964); the October Salon (1962) and First Place in the 1st Biennale of Quito (1967). During his early stages, he painted coastal landscapes in an Impressionist manner…)

Note: Work: Serie Formas, located in: Casa de la Cultura, Guayaquil.


2.-JOSEPH ROBERTS - USA

Curator, CoCA Ballard, 2009

President, 2005-2008
Board member: 2004-present


Roberts is CEO of Apulent, a Seattle based hospitality firm that provides event venue management, fine catering and event planning services.

He has curated numerous contemporary art exhibits, often writing essays for accompanying catalogues, some of which include:

Haris Purmono: Visual Poetry
East | West: Emerging Artist Exchange
Tracy Boyd: Seattle Sketches
Momoko Sudo: Linescaping
Sarah T. Skinner: Takako
Jules Frazier: Western Landscapes
Polyptychs: from the Joseph Roberts collection
Steven Poster photographs
Carlos Saura: Fotosaurios
Matthew Klein: Context Bends Perception

Roberts is board president of Copper Canyon Press (CopperCanyonPress.org), the preeminent independent publisher of poetry. He is a member of the board of advisors of Art With Heart (ArtWithHeart.org) providing art therapy for traumatized children, and he has long served as public arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA.org) resolving complex securities disputes. He serves a mentor for young people both privately and through formal college programs.

Previously, he practiced law with the Seattle based law firm of Skeel, Henke, Evenson & Roberts.

He is a graduate of Washington State University Honors Program (BA) and he received his law degree (JD) from Seattle University.


3.-ALEXANDRA ROSSETTI - USA

Vice President, Private client Group, Sotheby’s New York

Alexandra Rossetti is a senior member of Sotheby’s Private Client Group, a department dedicated to managing relationships with the firm’s top-level clients. In her ten years with the company, she has helped to expand major client and business development activities on a global level and has worked with the firm’s most valued clients on significant transactions both privately and at auction.

While she has been directly involved in virtually ever major auction across collecting categories since she joined the firm, Ms. Rossetti works closely with the Impressionist and Modern Art, Old Master Paintings and Latin American Art departments. She was raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina and, throughout her years in the company, has become the client liaison for all our Spanish speaking offices and an integral part of the Latin American Art team. Ms. Rossetti attended Columbia College in the city of New York where she received Bachelor of Arts degrees in both Art History and Economics.


4.-MARIELA GARCIA - Ecuador

Painter.- Born in Guayaquil on August 18, 1950 to lawful parents Patricio García Alcívar, businessman, and Jenny Caputti Campodónico, both from Guayaquil.

The oldest of three siblings growing up in the familial, Garcia, household on 9 de Octubre and Mascote. At 6-years old, she entered the Maria Auxiliadora School and in 4th grade, switched to Mercedarias. A good drawer, she received a thorough education, was a piano student of Blanca Muirriagui at the National Conservatory of Music, and of Piero Jaramillo and Esperanza Cruz in the School of Ballet belonging to the Casa de la Cultura. In 1969, she graduated from High School. Her family lived in Sucre, between Carchi and Tulcán, in the Salado neighborhood. That same year, she began to study Philosophy at the Catholic University, where she studied Light Drawing with Sister Regina Wojinski, of the Dominican Order, a life-changing experience, since from then on she began to think seriously of becoming a painter.

In ’71 she returned to Guayaquil, continued Decorative Courses at the Catholic University and entered into matrimony with Eduardo Manrique Trujillo with whom she had three daughters. In ’72, she matriculated at the Municipal School of Fine Arts, painting landscapes. In ’73 she took Literature classes with Father José Ignacio Varas and with Nila Velásquez. Her teacher, Enrique Tábara took her into his workshop. From thereon she developed, experimenting with and nurturing her own style. We share the opinion of critic, Hernán Rodríguez Catelo, who states that the Tábara workshop marked her expression profoundly. She learned the secrets of the trade, particularly in relation to the utilization of space, the possibilities offered by different materials, and in creative rigor, none of which signifies a loss of freedom. Her search centered around impressionism, structuralism and formalism, with her visual expression, for a long period, existing between the forms of the master and the world itself that searched for form. It is to her credit that she did not try to escape from the tension; instead she assumed the complexity that, in her case, the conquest of originality adopted. Color, in this stage, departed from all precedents, as she attempted to create ethereal spaces using whites and with hazy yet painstaking works.

In ’74 she presented her First Expositions in the Municipal Museum and in the Ecuadorian-North American Center, with figurative drawings, albeit with tendencies towards abstraction, earning good sales. In ’75 she was Commissioner of Visual Arts for the Municipal Center of Culture. In ’76, she earned the Acquisition Prize in the National Salon of the Casa de la Cultura. Between ’76 and ’78 she was Assistant for the Cultural and Computation Service for the United States Information Service (USIS). In ’77, Mariela participated in the First Salon of the Banco Central with Purification, where one could still detect thick textures via adhesions that she sought to replace with chromatic figures in ochres. That same year she also attained Second Prize in the National Salon of Tempera, Engraving and Drawing, organized by the Municipality of Quito.

In ’79 she participated in the Art Seminar “To-Kalon” in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her work begins to be more autonomous, replacing the compositional solidity with chromatic fugues, living a moment of perplexity. In ’78, she attained Second Place in the Municipal Salon of Painting, Guayaquil Foundation Between ’79 and ’89, she would participate in three International Biennales of Art celebrated in Valparaiso; in ’86 and ’89, in the Biennale of Havana; in ’86, in that of Miami; ’in 87, in that of Sao Paolo. So many works made her well-known, both nationally and even internationally.

In ’80, she entered the Center of Archeological and Anthropological Studies of the Litoral Polytechnic Superior College, whose director, Jorge Marcos Pino, helped her to encounter the ancestral roots that she required in order to paint our themes: “My reality is the “cholo” (Ecuadorian indigenous highlanders) and the “montubio” (Ecuadorian cowboy), it is not Pre-Colombian, for that reason I felt like an outsider, although my painting was very Ecuadorian.” She had excellent teachers, such as the Peruvian, Luis Lumbreras, and the Chilean, Felipe Bates, both of UNESCO, who knew how to enrich her cultural context. In ’85, Mariela took part in the Real Alto excavations, a site that had begun to be worked in the 1970’s by a group of archeologists from the University of Urbana in Illinois, US. The Belgian professor, Joss Buys, and the Argentine, Dr. Silvia Alvarez, were most influential in her formation, but it was the North American, Jimmy Ziedler, who by having her examine the numerous Valdivian figurines that kept appearing, suggested the topic of her degree in Archeology, which she defended in ’89, entitled “The Valdivian figurine in Real Alto: reflections on the Valdivian lifestyle.” Jorge Marcos has said that, via archeology, Mariela discovered herself. That discovery wasn’t through the Pre-Colombian, nor the indigenous, nor the autochthonous, because Tábara’s student was born an informalist, respecting the aboriginal as a valid artistic expression.

Nevertheless, in painting, she continued to manage the space that the canvas offered, playing with textures, marks, light and color, with grays, black and white dominating, in a melodic path towards the monochromatic.


5.-LARISSA MARANGONI - Ecuador

“ .... Larissa never leaves off thinking about projects for her art, with tense and nervous hands, she is never still… but if something signifies the work of this artist, it is the intellectual heritage that it has accumulated and the unhurried manner with which she resolves her works…she has had an academic formation….(Guayaquil, 1967). She has a BA in Sculpture and Drawing (1986-1990) from Bennington College, and obtained a Masters in Fine Arts in Sculpture (1990-1993) from Syracuse University. At the same time, she studied Sociology and Advanced Religions, African dance, jazz, languages.

Her art is committed to always being modern. That is to say, that in being, perhaps, the only creative artist with a solid basis within the neo-avant garde in Ecuador today, she never runs out of an analytical repertoire and the enjoyment of what she has made and will make.

Observing her works (installations, sculptures, objects, representations) ….the very followers of “minimal” art sustain that she is cold, but, really, she isn’t… The “minimal”, despite the arduous polemics….is emotional, it’s just that the emotions and the implicated experiences are new and unexpected. One should remember, therefore, that the rational and the conceptual are also capable of evoking emotions…. Since the eighties, this artist has produced series that reveal the indubitable influence of “minimal” art, this being the epitome of her philosophy: a visual work created with the lightest contribution of her hand. The artist herself tells us: “via this tendency, I can transmit silence and tranquility, above all in my installations”…The truth is that Larissa consolidates her proposal, one of the most sought after in contemporary Ecuador. Strict control of the techniques and the materials employed in her undertaking.

Intentional language…: cleanliness of hands, rapidity and perfection in realization… The works of her series, Arms of Battle, present an implacable compositional linkage… The artist’s steadiness of hand underlies the exacerbated softness of the wood, in conflict with the recently cut iron…. In her most recent work (video, objects and audio) she captures the tumultuous world of a group of people carrying huge packages on their shoulders. Larissa spent several days on the lacerating circuit of the Ipiales Market gathering the elements that would offer the most literal version of its human context in order to later recreate it from the world of her imagination…”

Note: Work “World Trade Center”, 1999, Iron, 14 meters tall.
Source: Marco Antonio Rodríguez, Palabra e Imagen, Vol 3, Quito-Ecuador