TEOFILO CASTILLO GUAS (1857-1922)
Nevado Huascaran (6,768m - 22, 205 ft)
Peru
The mountain
Novado Huascarán or Huascaran ( 6,768m - 22, 205 ft) is a mountain in the Peruvian province of Yungay (Ancash Region), situated in the Cordillera Blanca range of the western Andes. The highest southern summit of Huascarán (Huascarán Sur) is the highest point in Peru, the northern part of Andes (north of Lake Titicaca) and in all of the Earth's Tropics. Huascarán is the fourth highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere and South America after Aconcagua, Ojos del Salado, and Monte Pissis. The mountain was named after Huáscar, a 16th-century Inca emperor who was the Sapa Inca of the Inca empire.
The summit of Huascarán is the place on Earth with the smallest gravitational force.
Huascarán Sur was first reached on 20 July 1932 by a joint German–Austrian expedition. The team followed what would become later the normal route (named today Garganta route). The north peak (Huascarán Norte) had previously been climbed on 2 September 1908 by a U.S. expedition that included Annie Smith Peck, albeit this first ascent is somewhat disputed.
The painter
The peruvian painter, art critic and photographer Teófilo Castillo Guas was very representative of the peruvian pictorial academicism, influenced by the impressionism.
He studied at the Seminary of Santo Toribio in Lima and later in Europe: Spain, Belgium and France, countries where he contacted masterly art production. Returning to Peru, he stood out by exhibiting his paintings, inspired by the traditions of Ricardo Palma.
In 1888 he traveled to Buenos Aires where he married María Gaubeka and worked as a photographer and painter. In 1906 he returned to Peru to open his own workshop.
In the bieginning ot 20th century, he worked as a painter and art critic in charge of the artistic direction of the magazines Prisma, La Ilustración Peruana and Variedades , where he presented reproductions in three colors (trichromes) of his main works.
He enthusiastically promoted the founding of the National School of Fine Arts in Lima.
From 1920 to his death, he settled in Tucumán, where he directed the magazine Sol y Nieve (Sun and Snox . In addition, he painted a large canvas depicting General Manuel Belgrano presenting the Argentine flag to the Congress of Tucumán in 1816, a work that the Argentine government acquired for 20,000 pesos.
He was also noted for his canvases of colonial evocation inspired by episodes of the Peruvian Traditions of Ricardo Palma, which he made with a quick, colorful brush, in which the characters and the crowds in the processions vibrate, among browns and pinks, greens and blues.
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by Francis Rousseau
