Hermann Guggiari

He also made a monument to “Periodista martir Santiago Leguizamon“ (1991), located on the street with the name of the press man, victim of murder bullets. In 1994 he made a “Homenaje a Miro” in an international congress in Panama.

He was a member of various international juries, co-founder of Centro de Arte Moderno de Asuncion, founder and first president of the Centro de Escultores del Paraguay, founder of the Movimiento Ecologico Paraguayo (1990). In 1995 he was condecorated by the Paraguayan government with “the national merit order “, as a Commendatore. He was married to Deidamia Banks, was the father of eight children, four of whom keep the family spark of love to beauty in the center “Guggiari Arte”.

“Gaviota” (1982) is a sculpture presented in Punta del Este (Uruguay) in a mixed exposition of sculptors of Latin America, in the Playa Brava; it's a protest against the death of the coast birds due to the black ties produced by the petrol pollution.

On sustained development he presented in the university city of Fort Hays, Kansas, United States, a sculpture symbolizing the development of this state as the world granary. (1980)

“Brote”, an homage to his father, mayor of the city of Asunción who planted trees and created the green spaces of the city, is a sculpture inscribed within his optimistic themes. ”Historia”, presented at the Expo 92 in Sevilla, was selected by the organizers of the world event to be exposed at the entrance of the “Pabellon de las Americas”. His moral theme appeared in his “Cristo“, whose original is at the entrance of the church La Crucecita, in the Sajonia neighborhood, in Asunción. A copy of this work was presented at the X Bienal of São Paulo (1971) and obtained the Golden Medal; regarding this successful participation the critic Arnold Kohler, from Switzerland, said in the newspaper Tribune de Geneve: ” There are two artist in the Bienal of Sao Paulo, both sculptors, who having followed different steps, one figurative and the other abstract, have reached a high perfection and spirituality. The first one, Hermann Guggiari, Paraguayan-created a form of an angel emerging from the wall, a dramatic and sublime work.“

The lack of an official national art fair in Paraguay led him to create the “Bosque de los artistas”, in his own property, a fair which opened every Christmas from 1970 to 1995 becoming a Must of artistic creators, reaching a participation of 250 artists in the last editions.

Guggiari's body of work is large and has won prizes. Some have freedom as the central theme: ”Hungria o Libertad“, which received a special mention in the V Bienal of São Paulo (1959); ”Kennedy”, which obtained the first prize in sculpture in the Salon Esso of Young Artist of Latin America, organized by the OEA (1965): ”Rejas”, inspired in the prisons of the Stronist dictatorship; ”NNUU”, a seven meters structure, which is located at the entrance of the Dachau concentration camp (Germany) and symbolizes the United Nations in a form near the building of the NNUU, with perforations as wounds in two fronts-United Nations as a name, because the violence of the world continues-and as a sign of hope in each hole of the violence, a nest of real pigeons as a murmur of peace (199).

After the bloody civil war of 1947-1954 in Paraguay, Guggiari's liberal and democratic ideas gained him exile, cultural margination and imprisonment on several occasions, during the thirty-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

Hermann Guggiari (20 March 1924 – 1 January 2012) was a Paraguayan engineer and sculptor.