Chile’s Chillán Uncovers a Mural Hidden for Decades — and a Larger Mystery Emerges
In the Salon de Honor in Chillán, restorers are slowly bringing a politically charged mural back into view, one brushstroke-sized section at a time. The work, by Chilean artist Julio Escámez (1925–2015), has spent decades buried beneath 12 layers of white paint. Now, after a restoration effort that began in 2021, the city expects the project to continue until December 2027.
The mural, titled “Beginning and End,” was commissioned in 1969 by Mayor Eduardo Contreras Mella, on the eve of Salvador Allende’s presidential election victory. Escámez spent two years on the composition, which originally covered about 452 square feet and depicted the triumph of people over oppression through expressive figures and vivid color. It was unveiled in 1972, then later targeted after Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup. Pinochet ordered it destroyed, and Escámez was forced into exile in Costa Rica.
For years, the mural’s fate was described in contradictory ways. Some accounts said it had been attacked with bayonets; others claimed it had been coated in tar. Escámez himself said it was chipped away with “chisel and hammer.” But an initial analysis in 2021 by the University of the Arts found the first trace of the work beneath the paint. As historian Karin Cárdenas described it, a small opening revealed the orange pigment associated with the mural’s flame motif, suggesting that the image had survived intact under the overpaint.
That discovery changed the story. The mural had not been destroyed after all, only concealed. As the Heritage Unit of the Municipality of Chillán, also known as UPA, continued its work, restorers found that the original height had been reduced to make room for a second story, with a window cut directly through the composition. The team is now removing the paint manually, working in grids and stripping the surface day by day, according to restoration head Elvira Fuchslocher.
The project has also raised a new question: whether “Beginning and End” may actually refer to two works. The city now believes the title may encompass a second mural, one that shows a calmer scene of women looking through a telescope and suggests a different register of contemplation. Both works were designated National Monuments in 2024.
Nearly half a century after the dictatorship tried to erase it, Escámez’s mural is reappearing as both an artwork and a historical document — one that records not only artistic ambition, but the violence of political suppression and the persistence of cultural memory.
