According to Luis Zevallos Hetzel, the painting that took the prize at the Festivales Ancón is not exactly a work of art because it is an (exact) reproduction of an advertisement for a brand of motorcycles. Though the painter claims he is under no obligation to speak in theoretical terms about his own work—since it would be “a contradiction to explain in words what is purely visual”—his response reflects new ideas about originality in twentieth-century art. He refers to the readymade works by Marcel Duchamp and the depictions of consumer goods produced by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Tano Festa, Billy Al Bengston, and James Rosenquist, among others. These artists “added nothing to the design: they simply copied them faithfully,” an argument that validates the (opposing) ideas expressed in the same publication by the architect Augusto Ortiz de Zevallos. The painter seeks to affirm the distinctive features of his painting as compared to the examples mentioned. The critics’ bewilderment is understandable, and is due to the fact that this kind of work is still misunderstood in Peru.   

This is the painter Luis Zevallos Hetzel’s reply to the comments made by the critic Augusto Ortiz de Zevallos a week earlier in the same magazine, Oiga. The critic’s article challenged the artistic credentials of Zevallos Hetzel’s painting Motociclista No 3, which was awarded the Premio Principal at the event organized by the Festivales de Ancón. Zevallos was one of the pioneers of Pop Art in Peru, and was a member of Arte Nuevo, one of the avant-garde groups at that time. But controversial reactions and other factors subsequently led him to stop experimenting with innovative styles.

The jury’s decision concerning the First Prize (for painting) at the Festivales de Ancón in 1969 was extremely controversial, and marked both the peak and the turning point for the Peruvian cosmopolitan avant-garde in the local art scene in the 1960s. At that time Ancón was the most fashionable resort on the outskirts of Lima. During the summer it hosted musical and theatrical events, as well as lectures and a painting competition which (on that occasion) attracted a great deal of attention. When the results were announced, Caretas magazine published a letter accusing the winning painting—Motociclista No 3, by Luis Zevallos Hetzel—of plagiarism because it was a “faithful copy” of an advertisement published in the United States for a brand of motorcycles. An honorable mention at the contest went to a (playfully erotic Pop) painting by Ugo Camandona, an Italian painter and ceramicist who lived in Peru, who was also accused of supposed plagiarism. Both accusations sparked a heated debate about the value of “originality” in modern art, and about Pop Art’s role and function in consumer society. The apparent anachronism underlying the controversy clearly revealed the very limited penetration of avant-garde ideologies that had been achieved in a cultural milieu that was still reluctant to embrace the radical transformations that art was already experiencing in the rest of the world. All this was taking place in an environment that was increasingly having to adjust to the socialist and nationalist policies of the Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas (1968–1975), the military regime led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado.