EXHIBITIONS

Exhibitions, Special Awards and Artist Awards

   
In 1955 he started professionally in painting, although he drew from his childhood. He is currently in a figurative line: he works with models, he paints still lifes and portraits. He studied painting and drawing, since 1954, with the Dutch painter Jan Schreuder and started another learning experience in the workshop of the American painter Lloyd Wulf. He also studied architecture from the year 51.

artist awards

1960

Grand Prize "Mariano Aguilera" - Quito, Ecuador.

1961

First Prize "Salón Bolivariano" - Guayaquil, Ecuador.

1961

Honorable Mention "VI Sao Paulo Biennial" - Sao Paulo, Brazil.

1964

Fourth Prize "II American Art Biennial" - Córdoba, Argentina.

1968

Fourth Prize "I Bienal de Quito" - Quito, Ecuador.

1972

Selected by the jury from 20 selected works in the "III Coltejer Art Biennial" - Medellín, Colombia.

1977

"First National Central Bank Award" - Quito, Ecuador.

1997

"Eugenio Espejo" National Arts Award - Quito, Ecuador.

SPECIAL AWARDS

1979

Distinction "Luis A. Martínez", Illustrious Municipality of Ambato,

- Ambato, Ecuador.

1980

Commissioned by the Governor of the State of Kentucky as Colonel of Kentuky.

1997

"Eugenio Espejo" Award for the Arts - Quito, Ecuador.

1998

Decoration to Merit in the degree of Knight.

Awarded by the Architects Association of Tungurahua.

1998

Distinction "Cruz de J. Montalvo", Illustrious Municipality of Ambato.

Ambato, Ecuador.

2006

Tribute to Values of Ecuadorian Culture, medal awarded by AFESE, Association of Officials and Employees of the Ecuadorian Foreign Service.

2006

Decoration of the National Order "Al Merito" in the Degree of Commander, granted by the Constitutional President of the Republic of Ecuador, D.R. Alfredo Palacios.

2010

Decoration "Encomienda de Número de la Orden de Isabel la Católica", granted by Don Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, on December 21, 2010 Madrid - Spain

2012

Receives Tribute from the Fair of the Practical Amateur for his unwavering loyalty to the Fiesta Brava at the Tambo-Mulaló Hacienda, in addition the sculptor Edgar Balseca gave him his work TORO BLANCO. Lasso - Ecuador

2013

Decoration to the "Civic Merit" granted by the Honorable Provincial Government of Ambato on July 3, 2013, Ambato - Ecuador

“Viteri, to this day, raises its permanent concern for the contemporary world, for its own context, for the need for consolidation, recognition and identity in America.”

1960

Win the "Mariano Aguilera" award with the painting "Man, House and Moon", austere work of elements, with simple, contrasting planes, sometimes very smooth or very thick textures, closed in perfectly delimited spaces. It is the expressionist-symbolic stage of Viteri. At the same time, he works as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Central University of Ecuador and will do so until 1989.

1961

Participates with the Brazilian folklorist Paulo de Carvalho Neto in research on Ecuadorian folklore. He founded the Ecuadorian Folklore Institute, of which he will be its director for several years. This experience, from a direct contact with the physical environment of Ecuador and popular cultures, will mark him forever, clarifying and enriching his vision of the Latin American reality. The emergence of his concern both by the ancestor and by the present is evident. The symbols, the signs, the icons of the culture will appear already in his work. During this stage and the next one he obtains several important prizes, inside and outside the country.

1963-1968

The gestural abstract

   First stage of the abstract: Faced with a sense of limitation with his symbolic work, perceiving it too structured, rigid, hard, Viteri ends in his first experience with the abstract. At first they are lines made with a ballpoint pen. Later, oils with large spots are already created. He feels the need to reach a synthesis and this leads him to propose a gestural abstract in which there are reminiscences of the pre-Columbian - a question, a permanent concern: where do we come from, who are we? Believe in an art with content, with sense. The abstract is manifested in drawings and paintings with ease, spontaneity and with a certain influence of the action painting of the United States, the so-called Action Painting. Its exponents, like Viteri from the year 56, show a deep interest in Zen Buddhism, a concern that will later generate a neofigurative and abstract-gestural line, mainly in ink drawing.

Second stage of the abstract:

  
Viteri goes beyond the use of the brush: crushes the tube directly on the fabric. Create works of strong impasto, but always in search of an authentic character. It is a stage in addition to deep aesthetic-plastic concern, with resolution in large formats. 

1968

    
The meeting takes place in Quito with the Spanish painter Viola, who belongs to the group "El Paso" of Madrid, made up of artists of the stature of Saura, Feito, Millares, among others. Viola, who is also characterized by gestural abstract, works in the Viteri workshop of the School of Fine Arts, of which, the latter, is its director since 66. They work together. But, by then, Viteri the abstract and nothing says: a depletion and saturation within this trend, lead him to a new search, both conceptual and technical, whose result is the assembly.

    
A new language arises, which in a certain way disdains the painting as such, because on the surface, previously completely painted, now they have stuck, incorporated objects extracted from the ancestral and popular culture and whose own life, prior to the work of art , is irremediably transformed into its new aesthetic-plastic context. These objects: arpilleras, chasubles, rag dolls acquire, on the one hand, new content, both conceptual and space-time; on the other hand, they print their own symbolic-plastic wealth within the work of art, also transforming it irreversibly.

1969

He travels to Spain and resides there for a year, an experience that sharpens the need to deepen this new language, the assembly. In Madrid he meets the Polish-Jewish painter Maryan; he works with him and feels his influence in what will be his new neofigurative stage, from which ink drawings emerge, filled with a dramatic emotional charge. It is a period of strong emotional crisis. Their assemblages begin to be recognized internationally and are manifested above all through the concept of miscegenation.

To the present

   He continues with his assemblages, neofigurative and abstract-gestural drawings of Zen influence; also, the portrait and the figurative drawing with diverse iconic references remain valid in his work, through time. Moreover, his work is increasingly multifaceted and rich in experiences not only technical and thematic, but fundamentally conceptual.

   
From the year 92 he returns to the experience of the oil from which enormous Andean landscapes of expressionist-abstract tendency emerge, and whose "exploration" continues in force.

  
On the other hand, in 1998, as part of his incursion into the expressionist trend, the human figure appears -mainly naked, almost cavalier heads- and it is they who appropriate formats of medium and small sizes with expressions of profound psychological drama, within a rather uniform and dark chromatic.

    
In the year 2001, he introduces the expressionist language to the large format, where nude figures of full length appear, of great chromatic intensity and that make us think of the grace and misfortune of man.

  
He has worked on several murals and sculpture projects. He travels through several countries, often as a jury of important events, enriching his artistic experience. He has participated in more than 60 individual exhibitions and 120 collective exhibitions, inside and outside the country; His work has been exhibited in several countries in America, Asia and Europe, and consists of several private collections and important museums of the world.

   
Among the most outstanding exhibitions is the "Exhibition of Latin American Art" at the Hayward Gallery in London, which shows that he later traveled to Stockholm and Madrid; He has also exhibited at the "Museo Rufino Tamayo" - Mexico City, the "BMW Gallerie" - Munich, the "Ibero Club" - Bonn, the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Miaraflores - Lima, the Marco Museum, Monterrey-Mexico, the National Museum of Fine Arts -Buenos Aires.

He has participated in the Biennials of: Venice-Italy, Sao Paulo-Brazil, Córdoba-Argentina, Coletjer Medellín -Colombia

Gestural abstract.Ballpoint pen on paper1963- 1968 — Gestural abstract.
Ballpoint pen on paper
1963- 1968

A house with stars awaits me at a crossroads of heaven. Assembly 1978 — A house with stars awaits me at a crossroads of heaven.
Assembly 1978

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