The exhibition Two Views of the Middle of the World, presented at La Pigna gallery in Rome from October 10 to 17, 2025, brought together Ecuadorian artists Miguel Betancourt and William Cáceres for the first time in this city. It was a pictorial encounter celebrating the natural, ancestral, and contemporary richness of Ecuador, within the framework of the 125th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Ecuador and Italy. Both artists, with consolidated international careers, offered the European public two complementary visions of the same cultural territory. As the curatorial concept highlights, the exhibition proposes “a pictorial narrative with an individual perspective regarding natural, ancestral, contemporary, and Andean richness”.

Miguel Betancourt presented artworks that travel through his most emblematic thematic sequences: the ancestral, the arborescent, the Iberian, and the sacred. Textures, transparencies, and cultural references dialogue in pieces that condense more than four decades of artistic exploration.

William Cáceres, for his part, exhibited compositions where abstract and figurative elements intertwine with an expressive and emotional spirit. His work, imbued with Andean mythology and personal symbolism, invites an introspective and sensory journey.

The exhibition was enthusiastically welcomed by the Embassy of Ecuador in Italy, which highlighted its cultural value and its contribution to dialogue between both countries. In Betancourt’s own words, “these types of exhibitions are necessary to consolidate our bonds of fellowship”.

Two Views of the Middle of the World was presented as an artistic bridge between Ecuador and Europe, celebrating identity, memory, and contemporaneity through two voices that, although distinct, recognize each other in the same origin.