The author notes that the furniture and the decorations on the ceilings, floors, and walls of the Peruvian Pavilion at the Sevilla Expo are all the work of José Sabogal, expressed “in the vernacular style that both moves and captivates him.” This article refers specifically to the frieze he created for this room, made up of six panels based on motifs inspired by “keros” (the Inca ceremonial urns that were also used during colonial times), and discusses the Incas’ methods for smelting and transporting the materials they used in the working of precious metals. The author explains that “within the extreme synthetism of lines in his compositions, Sabogal achieves superb effects with large expanses of color,” and mentions the painter’s interest in expressionism.

In this brief article the art critic Carlos Solari (1883–1932), writing under the pseudonym “Don Quijote,” discusses the decoration of the Peruvian Pavilion’s mining hall at the Sevilla Expo created by the founder of the Peruvian Indigenist painting movement, José Sabogal (1888–1956).

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, 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.

[There are a great many articles about this artist in the ICAA digital archive, notably the following by Sabogal himself: “Arquitectura peruana: la casona arequipeña (doc. no. 1173340); “La cúpula en América” (doc. no. 1125912); “Mariano Flórez, artista burilador de ‘mates’ peruanos, murió en Huancayo: José Sabogal su admirador y amigo, le rinde homenaje” (doc. no. 1136695); “Los mates burilados y las estampas del pintor criollo Pancho Fierro” (doc. no. 1173400); “Los ‘mates’ y el yaraví” (doc. no. 1126008); “La pintura mexicana moderna” (doc. no. 1051636); and “Sala de arte popular peruano en el Museo de la Cultura: selecciones de arte” (doc. no. 1173418)].