This article by Ramiro Pérez Reinoso was written in response to a piece by Alberto Gerchunoff published in the Buenos Aires daily newspaper, La Nación (January 31, 1926). The writer reviews the opinion of the Russian/Argentine intellectual, who believed it was “una fantasía inútil” [a pointless fantasy] to try to articulate a Latin American art based on the pre-Columbian legacy. Pérez Reinoso agrees that the pre-Columbian legacy “se construye y amplía sobre sí mismo” [has been constructed and built upon itself], and that “se agrega al arte cosmopolita como valor de complementación” [it has been added to cosmopolitan art as a supplementary value]. [To Gerchunoff,] in the absence of the Classical ideals, Native art would be uncivilized and would lack universality and beauty. But in Pérez Reinoso’s opinion, “hoy el arte no es sólo una manifestación de lo bello” [today’s art is not just a manifestation of what is beautiful]. Classical perfection would not only have been made commonplace by being “inevitable para nuestros gustos” [inevitable for our tastes]; but, “en la estética de los artistas de izquierda” [in the aesthetics of leftist artists], it would have also represented “el más combatido conservadurismo” [a conservatism of the most objectionable sort]. On the contrary, new art is in search of “el miedo, la paradoja, el exotismo” [fear, the paradox, exoticism], everything that Gerchunoff identifies “como la distancia entre el arte indígena y el espíritu bonaerense” [as the distance between Native art and the spirit of Buenos Aires]. In this regard, pre-Columbian art “es historia y leyenda, vestigio rico de vidas antiguas, y en ello tiene su poema propio, su belleza interior e inmaterial” [is history and legend, a rich vestige of ancient lives, and that is the source of its own poetry, its inherent and immaterial beauty]. To subordinate these elements to the category of beauty shows “una falta de disposición para la comprensión y generosidad espirituales” [a disinclination toward spiritual comprehension and generosity]; this is why Pérez Reinoso concludes his article by congratulating those who are trying to reassess these pre-Columbian works.

Throughout the twentieth century, pre-Columbian art was established as one of the central reference points for artists and intellectuals interested in developing “una arte americano” [a Latin American art]. In Peru, the first attempts to assimilate that legacy into the contemporary visual arts were promoted by the critic, Teófilo Castillo, in the first decades of the century. But it was during the 1920s, when it was interwoven with the prevailing nationalist movements, that this trend reached its height. However, the interest in pre-Hispanic art at that time was mainly focused on either providing credibility to historical reconstructions of the past or creating ornamental pieces that could be considered “Peruvian.” In that scenario, César Falcón (1892–1970) and Ramiro Pérez Reinoso were leftist intellectuals. Falcón was tied to Communism and Pérez Reinoso, to APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria de América [American Popular Revolutionary Alliance], an Indianist movement founded by Raúl Haya de la Torre in 1924). The two men were distinguished by their almost completely opposite opinions. In keeping with the Marxist propaganda work he was doing in Spain, Falcón rejected pre-Columbian art, considering it the product of absolutist, conservative societies. On the other hand, Pérez Reinoso identified the “revolutionary” potential of that legacy, opposing it to the reactionary taste of the “derecha” [right]. Tying the pre-Columbian aesthetic to the avant-garde, he also heralded the possibility of a national art that would transcend the thematic repertoire of Indianism.