"I struggle with a straight line", Carlos Vilaro

Carlos Páez Vilaró was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1923. He took up drawing in 1939 and relocated to Buenos Aires, where he worked as a printing apprentice in the industrial Barracas section of the Argentine capital. Returning to Montevideo in the late 1940s, he developed an interest in Afro-Uruguayan culture. Settling in Montevideo's primarily black neighborhood of "Mediomundo" ("Middle Earth"), he studied the Candombé and Comparsa dances characteristic to the culture

He composed numerous musical pieces in the two genres and conducted an orchestra. His group's congas and bongos were decorated with their leader's own thematic drawings, as well. His interest in the culture later led him to Brazil, home to the western hemisphere's largest population of African descent. Páez Vilaró was invited to exhibit some of this work by the Director of the Modern Art Museum of Paris, Jean Cassou, in 1956. He traveled to Dakar, Senegal, later that year - his first visit to Africa.

Increasingly well-known, Páez Vilaró was commissioned in 1959 to create a mural for a tunnel connecting a new annex to the Organization of American States' Washington, DC headquarters, the Pan American Union building. Originally intended to be no more than 50 ft (15 m) in length, the completed mural (Roots of Peace) measured 510 ft (155 m) long and nearly 7 ft (2 m) high when unveiled in 1960. Extensive damage from humidity prompted the artist to repaint the mural in 1975.


Casapueblo, his "living sculpture" and best-known creation. A leading tourist destination in Uruguay since the late 1960s. The tourist symbol of Punta del Este "Casapueblo", is 130 km east of Montevideo.[5]He purchased a sea-front property on eastern Uruguay's scenic, then-desolate Punta Ballena, in 1958, building a small, wooden lodge that over time became "Casapueblo" ("House-Village"). The sprawling compound, a whitewashed cement structure reminiscent of Mykonos, was built in stages by the artist to resemble the mud nests created by the region's native hornero birds, and became his home, atelier and museum. Though he resided in Casapueblo - his "living sculpture" - by 1968, Páez Vilaró continued to add on the structure at his desire, at times adding a room for a particular guest. He later opened a section of Casapueblo to tourism as a hotel.‎ Páez Vilaró remained active in European and African culture, as well. He remained close with numerous friends from his days in Paris in the late 1950s, particularly Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso, and in 1967, established a film production company ("Dahlia") with the help of European industrialists Gerard Leclery and Gunther Sachs. He traveled in numerous West African nations to make a documentary, Batouk, with director Jean-Jacques Manigot and poet Aimé Césaire.