In this essay Jorge Falcón discusses the exhibition of works by Lajos d’Ebneth, the Hungarian artist who lived in Peru, at the Galería de Lima in August 1950. Falcón states objectively that art is, above all, a product in search of “its client.” Intellectual creativity, therefore, not only deserves formal appraisal; it is also entitled to an opinion concerning its “suggested purpose.” Referring to art, and considering the positive or negative outcomes of all human actions, Falcón recalls Pablo Picasso’s political about face before the Second World War, “prompted by the popular struggle he joined in search of a new life, a new culture.” Those who ignored that lesson (existentialists, metaphysicians, and “moderns”) used the defense “of decadence and extreme reactionary thinking” in their critique of the Madonna azul, the Hungarian painter’s “picture card.” What is even more serious, according to this writer and militant communist is that, as seen from such esoteric perspectives, the painting represents “the cultural pinnacle of our people,” with which no connection could possibly be made. In Falcón’s opinion it is obvious that factions of this kind operate “covertly on behalf of retrograde political interests”—that is, capitalists. He compares this approach to movements that are committed to human progress, such as “realism in art and literature, scientific materialism in philosophy, and experimental science in the culture as a whole.” 

The Hungarian painter Lajos d’Ebneth (1902–82) arrived in Lima in 1949—preceded by his reputation, which was bolstered by a career that included time spent at the Bauhaus and high praise from North American art critics—and became very influential in the local art world. His international prestige, and the esoteric image that he cultivated, earned him the admiration of most Lima intellectuals. His donation of an important sculpture to the city, and the robbery of another, helped to stoke his incipient fame. In August 1950, however, he took a controversial step when he exhibited his Madonna azul, a Renaissance inspired canvas whose aesthetic merit was hotly debated by the critics. Shortly thereafter d’Ebneth showed his final piece, a work of symbolic expressionism that Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (b. 1918), who was obsessed by the essential being of art, dubbed an “ontological painting” [see the following article in the ICAA digital archive, “Arte, metafísica y prejuicio” (doc. no. 1138547) and “La gran pietà” (doc. no. 1138337)]. Expanding on his elaborate praise of the Madonna, Cantuarias said that it was the crowning achievement of modern formal expression because it addressed the “expression of being.” As a result of all this, d’Ebneth’s figurative and symbolic painting was considered (by some local intellectuals) to have taken the debates between “art purists” and “social realists” to a new level, a landmark event in the country’s involvement in modern art. In response to those arguments, the writer Jorge Falcón (1908–2003)—with all the force of his communist militancy and his devotion to the indigenism of the Andes region—fiercely rejected both the Hungarian artist’s work and the critical discourse that sought to justify it [see “Meta fija de los artepuristas y metafísicos” (doc. no. 1138686)].