In his review of José Sabogal’s 1937 exhibition, the author claims that an analysis of the evolution of the painter’s work reveals “a single driving thought and a single, constant desire for modernity, as well as a sense of the vernacular.” Salinas Cossío explains that, in his early days, the painter was influenced by the late nineteenth-century Spanish realist school’s preference for Impressionist colors, but later developed greater linear precision. All of which led to a “decorative synthetism” that is based on a harmonious use of color. This was his version of modernity, though it was neither avant-garde nor extravagant. Sabogal’s nationalism, on the other hand, does not confuse “painting with political programs,” nor is it full of “learned, pedantic yearnings for sterile archeological resurrections.” Salinas Cossío considers Sabogal to be the cornerstone of a kind of nationalism that, in the Peruvian tradition, goes beyond Laso’s lyrical expansion and Fierro’s cultural inadequacies. The author mentions the different subjects and styles in the works at the exhibition: realism, racial types, landscapes, and decorativism, and speaks at greatest length about Sabogal’s paintings of the Amazon region where, influenced by certain contemporary trends, he presents a stylized expression of man and his natural surroundings.

This is the intellectual Guillermo Salinas Cossío’s review of the exhibition of works by José Sabogal at the Sociedad Filarmónica (Lima, 1937). The author of this review was a lawyer and professor at the Facultad de Letras at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, from which he graduated with a law degree. He later developed a particular interest in philosophy and aesthetics, and became the first chair of the Art History department at that institution. He moved in artistic circles, wrote art criticism, helped to produce exhibition catalogues—including the exhibition of paintings by Francisco Laso (Lima: Sociedad “Entre Nous”, 1937)—and gave lectures, such as “La pintura italiana contemporánea” (published by the Instituto Cultural Ítalo Peruano, Lima, ca. 1930). 

Indigenist painting flourished in Peru from the 1920s to the 1940s as part of a broader movement that sought to redefine Peruvian identity in terms of indigenous elements. Although at some points it was entirely focused on the “indigenous” story and the Inca past that was considered to have been glorious, it also championed a mestizo identity portrayed as a result of the integration of “native” and “Hispanic” cultures. The main ideologue and unchallenged leader of the Indigenist movement in the visual arts was José Sabogal (1888–1956), whose profound interpretation of the concept of “being rooted” was deeply influenced by regional art movements in Spain (exemplified by Ignacio Zuloaga [1870–1945], among others) and in Argentina (Jorge Bermúdez [1883–1926], to mention just one); Sabogal spent a great deal of time in these countries during his formative years. When he returned to Peru in late 1918 he settled in Cuzco, where he produced about forty oil paintings of people and scenes of the city; these works were subsequently shown in Lima (1919) at an exhibition that is considered the formal beginning of Indigenist painting in Peru. Sabogal’s second one-man show, at the Casino Español (1921), established his reputation. He joined the faculty at the new Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1920, where he was eventually appointed director (1932–43). There he trained a group of painters who joined the Indigenist movement, such as Julia Codesido, Alicia Bustamante (1905–68), Teresa Carvallo (1895–1988), Enrique Camino Brent (1909–60), and Camilo Blas (1903–85).