In this text, Mirko Lauer (under the pseudonym “N. O. Sengai”) points out that only artists and intellectuals, not artisans, have participated in the debate around granting the Premio Nacional [award] to López Antay. He argues that that is due to misunderstandings, including ignorance of the fact that “López Antay is neither marginal nor uneducated, but rather a first-rate artist, one who participates in the domestic and international art market at a similar and sometimes higher level as Peruvian painters.” Lauer states that the polemic is unnecessarily tied to “the confusion of race with class and the automatic association of the Andean and folk culture,” even though there are hierarchies and class stratifications within the Quechua-speaking universe. He believes that the prize is the culmination of thirty years of struggle first to revalorize, then to enshrine, and finally to gain government recognition of crafts. “Akin to what took place in Mexico forty years ago, that process has not entailed salvaging, but rather embracing a sector of Andean art.” That implies expanding those forms of artistic expression that receive government support, enabling crafts to shift from “the anonymous and collective” to the individual. It also means that crafts “are recognized and consumed in the same circuits as painting and sculpture.” At stake is “modernization of the concept of art” in order to provide more diverse forms of expression with equal access to the market and to public recognition. 

Czech-born Peruvian writer and critic Mirko Lauer (b. 1947) wrote these reflections on the polemic unleashed when the 1975 Premio Nacional de Cultura [award] in the art category was granted to Andean altarpiece maker Joaquín López Antay (1897–1981); they were published under the pseudonym “N. O. Sengai.” Lauer supported some of the most radical stances held by the administration of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, including the decision to grant the Premio Nacional de Cultura [award] to López Antay. He had worked in the outreach office of the agrarian reform administration, writing a number of the texts that appeared on posters designed by artist and designer Jesús Ruiz Durand (b. 1940). Lauer would address the polemic surrounding López Antay in other texts as well, among them “Lo andino en el arte peruano” (Sociedad  y política, N° 8, Lima, February 1980) and Crítica de la artesanía. Plástica y sociedad en los Andes peruanos (Lima: DESCO, 1982), both of which are reproduced for this project.

The decision to grant the 1975 Premio Nacional de Cultura [award] in the art category to Andean altarpiece maker Joaquín López Antay gave rise to one of the most heated polemics in the history of Peruvian art, one that brought the latent tensions and mistrust surrounding the cultural policies supported by the military government under General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75) to the surface. In his search for an “authentic” national culture, he attempted to revalorize the image of the peasant and of peasant lifestyles as opposed to “Western” cultural forms. Indeed, granting the prize to López Antay meant ignoring widely recognized contenders such as visual artists Carlos Quízpez Asín (1900–83) and Teodoro Núñez Ureta (1912–88), and German-born academic musician Rodolfo Holzmann (1910–92).

[Regarding these events, see the following articles in the ICAA digital archive: by Alfonso Castrillón, Leslie Lee, and Carlos Bernasconi “Fundamentación para el dictamen por mayoría simple a favor del artista popular Joaquín López Antay” (doc. no. 1135896); by Alfonso Bermúdez “Premio a López Antay suscita controversias. Unos: consagración del arte popular. Otros: una cosa es arte y otra artesanía” (doc. no. 1135879); by Francisco Abril de Vivero, Luis Cossío Marino, and Alberto Dávila “Artistas plásticos cuestionan premio” (doc. no. 1135960); and (unsigned) “‘No todos nos quieren ni en Lima ni en Ayacucho’: así comentó sobre cuestionamiento a premio (…)” (doc. no. 1135930)].