Painted in encaustic on canvas, Memory of Forms is representative of Ecuadoran artist Estuardo Maldonado’s early abstract work. Glyphs cover the surface of the canvas in a grid-like pattern reminiscent of Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García’s Constructive Universalism of the 1930s and 1940s. By employing pictograms, as well as the vertical structure, geometric forms, and earth tones of pre-Columbian art in his paintings, Maldonado referenced the regional art of the Andes while simultaneously relating that tradition to an imagined universal primitive defined by a propensity for geometric drawing and pictographic writing. Maldonado’s glyphs are abstract shapes and patterns etched onto the surface of the canvas. They vary in size and orientation and sometimes repeat and other times stand alone. An emphasis on zigzags, diamonds, and triangles creates a unifying aesthetic. While his hieroglyphics are invented, their arrangement suggests an archaic visual language. His signs are abstract shapes with no identifiable referent; his paintings sit on the boundary between abstraction and representation. Unique to Maldonado’s process is his use of encaustic, a technique he learned while studying in Rome. The wax medium allowed him to build up the surface and create a texture suggestive of ancient relief sculpture. Color also played a role in the apparent aging of the image. Along the top of the canvas and in the lower left corner, Maldonado applied a deep reddish pink tone evoking a marble surface. But in the center and lower right the image fades to a much paler tone as if the “marble” had been exposed to sunlight over an extended period of time or had been touched by generations of readers. By aging the canvas Maldonado alludes to the undecipherable myths of an ancient past. Born in Pintag, Ecuador Estuardo Maldonado studied at the Escuela Municipal de Bellas Artes in Guayaquil from 1947 to 1953 under Hans Mikelson and Alfredo Palacio. He held his first individual exhibition in 1952 at the Casa de la Cultura, Nucleo de Manabí and thereafter held several other exhibitions in Quito, Guayaquil, Portoviejo, and Esmeraldas. In 1957 he received a grant to study in Italy where he enrolled at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Rome under Franco Gentilini; he also took classes at the Academia de San Giacomo. It was in Italy that he learned the encaustic technique that he employed extensively in his abstract paintings. Around 1960 he began referencing pre-Columbian culture and aesthetics in his abstract compositions, developing his signature style. He returned to Ecuador in the mid-1960s, but traveled frequently back to Italy. In Ecuador he affiliated with the Grupo VAN (Vanguardia Artística Nacional), an artists’ collective that opposed the predominance of indigenism in Ecuadoran painting and advocated for a new approach to art-making that was simultaneously universal and rooted in the region’s pre-Columbian culture. In 1967 he held his first exhibition in the United States at the Pan American Union at the invitation of José Gómez Sicre. Since that time he has established a reputation as an internationally renowned abstract artist. Maldonado has held 88 individual exhibitions throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States and has participated in numerous international biennials and more than 200 group shows. In addition to painting, Maldonado has created twelve murals and monumental sculptures for urban spaces. In 2009 Maldonado received the Eugenio Espejo Prize, Ecuador’s most prestigious National Award for Art, Literature, and Culture.