José Gabriel Navarro and his contributions on art, education and national identity in the context of the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress of 1915

Abstract

Several studies of Navarro's work have mainly reviewed and discussed his contributions and dissertations on the so-called Quito’s colonial art. On this occasion, this paper seeks to contribute on understanding Navarro as an intellectual of the first half of the 20^th century. As well as understand his actions in the local artistic field and in the construction of a cultural discourse of an American art within a Pan-American context. For this purpose, the proposal about an artistic education written by Pedro Pablo Traversari, José Gabriel Navarro and José María Durán is used as a central document. In addition, the epistolary resource of the José Gabriel Navarro Archive, in the Biblioteca Ecuatoriana Aurelio Espinosa Pólit, reveals dialogues, at an intellectual level, of a utopian and homogenizing configuration of a vernacular art. This resource exposes Navarro’s acquaintances between cultural actors of the first decades of the 20^th century.

Key words: Ecuadorian art, Latin American Art, artistic education, national identity