APRECIACIONES SOBRE DOS ESCRITOS DE LUIS A. MARTÍNEZ: LA PINTURA DE PAISAJE EN ECUADOR (1898) Y A LA COSTA (1904)

Abstract

Politician and prolific writer of –among others- newspaper articles, short stories of a marked satirical character, informative books on agriculture or novelist, Luis A. Martínez Holguín (1869- 1909) was also an extraordinary landscape painter. Among his multiple writings, the little-known historical-artistic essay entitled Landscape painting in Ecuador (1898) stands out, and it is capital to understand the author’s thinking in relation to his clearly romantic conception of landscape painting, al time that supposes a declaration on the principles that guide his own plastic representation in that pictorial genre. Said writing will be addressed aesthetically in the first part of this article.

Likewise, and in the second part of this work, a study of his well-known novel A la Costa (1904) is developed, which, although it has been analyzed from different points of view (political, sociological, historical, literary, etc.), perhaps be its aesthetic-existential drift, which -in my opinion- conceptually articulates the ultimate meaning of it. Therefore, it is intended to offer an analysis of said work specifically from this perspective.