In this text, Peruvian writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy comments on the exhibition of Surrealist painting held at the Galería de Lima in July 1954. In Salazar Bondy’s view, Surrealism played a fundamental role in forming the language of modern art; he describes it as “the boldest attempt to fracture reality for the sake of mystery.” Without its initial aggressiveness, however, the movement has, in the writer’s opinion, completed its mission. In his view, there are three attitudes, torn between objectivity and non-figuration, within Surrealism: a sort of “academicism,” a “magic” attitude, and an “abstract” stance. Salazar Bondy has nothing good to say about the works in the first category, in which he places painters like Belgian artist René Magritte. Among the artists in the second group, Salazar Bondy praises the work of Cuban painters Óscar Domínguez and Wifredo Lam, of French artists Francis Picabia and Max Ernst, and others. In Salazar Bondy’s view, the artists in the third group, the “abstract” group, adhere to Surrealism “due more to a question of sentiment than of style.” He deems paintings by artists like Simon Hantaï “chromatic reflections, interplays of form and color, variations of material and quality that are at times interesting and at times hopelessly vacuous.” The abstract position is, then, the “dreadful strain” that will deepen “the divorce between aesthetic creation and the world of the common man.” It is an art of “esoteric sects” that “revels in its solitariness,” with no aesthetic or social concern whatsoever. Notwithstanding, Salazar Bondy recognizes it as a true artistic revolution.

Perhaps the main cause for rejection of abstract art in Peru in the fifties was its identification with “the cosmopolitan,” epitomized in the negative image of the “countriless” described in this article by writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy (1924–65) published in La Prensa newspaper (Lima, July 13, 1954). In this text, Salazar Bondy voices a passionate defense of “county folk”—those spiritually tied to the “nation”—as fundamental artistic value. Two days after this article was published, Salazar Bondy would return to this theme in his remarks on the exhibition of Surrealist painters held in July 1954 at the Galería de Lima. Part of an ambitious season of international art that would leave its mark on the Peruvian capital, this was the first show held in the country of works by major Surrealists like Francis Picabia, René Magritte, Wifredo Lam, and Max Ernst. Before works of this nature, there was no way to avoid discussing the role played by Surrealism in modern art and its formation; otherwise polarized local criticism came together to oppose that movement’s turn to a “non-figurative” vision. Salazar Bondy and writer Juan Ríos (1914–91) saw under the initial vitality and frankness of those canvases an incipient decadence: self-referential—abstract—art in no way connected to the common man. Modern theorist and architect Luis Miró Quesada Garland (1914–94) upheld the other position, seeing in those Surrealist works a gradual honing of visual values. He defended cosmopolitanism, ironically confronting the idea of “country folk” with passages from Salazar Bondy’s remarks on the show. In his rebuttal, Salazar Bondy stated that he considered his exchange with Miró Quesada Garland to have come to an end, since his rival had sunk to such low levels.

[For further reading on the debates between Peruvian modernists and advocates of socially committed art, see the following articles in the ICAA digital archive: by Fernando de Szyszlo “Dice Fernando Syszlo que no hay pintores en el Perú ni América: el joven pintor peruano declara sentir su pintura y la de los demás pero no puede explicarla” (doc. no. 1137793); and by critic Samuel Pérez Barreto “Pintura: la guerra de los pintores: plumas por pinceles” (doc. no. 1137839), “Arte: la guerra de los pintores” (doc. no. 1137856), and “Polémica: ‘polémica Espacio’” (doc. no. 1137916). See as well writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy’s lecture “Cómo la pintura ha buscado al Perú,” published in three parts: “El arte colonial entendido como represión” (doc. no. 1138058), “Los que intentan vencer el complejo” (doc. no. 1138075), and “Hallazgo de la realidad perdida: siglo XX” (doc. no. 1138092). Other texts by Salazar Bondy pertinent to the debate on nationalism include “En torno al desarraigo” (doc. no. 1138565) and “Punto final” (doc. no. 1138231). On the other side of the debate, see the column written by Miró Quesada Garland, the primary framer of Peruvian artistic modernism, entitled “En blanca y negra” (doc. no. 1138753), (doc. no. 1138772), (doc. no. 1138599), (doc. no. 1138620), (doc. no. 1138718), and (doc. no. 1138248)].