Pintores de Tigua: Indigenous Artists of Ecuador
Tigua artists from high in the Ecuadorian Andes are renowned for their colorful paintings of rural life. Their delightful folk art, painted on sheep hide, celebrates their mountain life with its festivals, legends, and traditions dating back centuries.
Tigua is a collection of small communities southwest of Quito. Most of the people here are famers who herd sheep and llamas and cultivate potatoes, onions, barley and other crops on a patchwork of steep, windswept fields and valleys. Tigua artists are deeply bound to the land. Even though most Tigua artists now live on the outskirts of Quito, many return periodically to their communities to tend to their lands.
Traditionally, the Kichwa people of this region decorated drums and masks for use in colorful festivals like Corpus Cristi and Noche Buena. In the the early 1970’s, Olga Fisch, a Quito art dealer suggested the idea of painting on a flat surface—a sheepskin stretched over a wood frame. It changed Tigua art dramatically. As the market grew for these colorful paintings, more and more men and women from the area began to paint. Though lacking formal training, Tigua artists have seen their creations exhibited throughout Ecuador and beyond. Tigua paintings are now widely collected and prized for their vibrancy and detail.
Tigua artists paint almost exclusively on sheep hide. The