This short article is about the second solo exhibition of Gloria Gómez Sánchez at the Cultura y Libertad gallery in Lima (May–June 1967). The anonymous author underscores the female content of the material on display: “woman as a target,” “woman as an entity that has been stabbed by the world and is entangled with itself.” According to the report, this artist was “one of the country’s first modern nonconformists,” who “developed a sort of Op-Pop-Sex of her very own.” Gómez Sánchez was therefore a “genuine representative of the avant-garde movement,” since her intention was to break through the boundaries set by galleries “using specifically and legitimately female molds.”

Gloria Gómez Sánchez is credited with having introduced Informalism in Peru, as one of the  Pop and Op Art pioneers in the country. She started out working in several different private studios in Lima. After studying in Buenos Aires on a scholarship, she quit her life as a housewife and portrait painter to pursue a brief, intense professional career. While in the capital city of Argentina she met artists such as Alberto Greco (1931–1965) and other promoters of Informalism and the incipient Conceptualist movement. When she returned to Peru in 1960, she had a solo exhibition of Informalist works at the IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo). Her interest in experimental work led her to the Arte Nuevo group, whose members were Luis Arias Vera (b. 1931), Gloria Gómez-Sánchez (1921–2007), Teresa Burga (1935-2021), Jaime Dávila (b. 1937), Víctor Delfín (b. 1927), Emilio Hernández Saavedra (b. 1940), José Tang (1941–2006), Armando Varela (b. 1933), and Luis Zevallos Hetzel (b. 1933). This group was the standard bearer of a visual art offensive that together with other initiatives in Peru, defined the artistic avant-garde of the 1960s. In her third solo exhibition at the Cultura y Libertad gallery—which is reviewed in this 1967 article—the artist presented new work that was brimming with an eroticism that she expressed in “figurines” representing “women-table,” and “women-peacock,” and kinetic paintings equipped with mechanisms driven by tiny engines.     

For more information about the Grupo Arte Nuevo, see the following articles in the ICAA digital archive: “De cómo el Gral. Velasco reventó el ‘¡Pop! Art’” by Luis Freire (doc. no. 1139323); “Espíritu renovador: exposición del Grupo “Arte Nuevo’” by Juan Acha (doc. no. 1142771); “Exagerado sentido realista: Exposición de Luis Arias Vera” (anonymous) (doc. no. 1142510);  “La nueva imagen del IAC” (doc. no. 1142594), and “La pintura se fue a la feria: Happening vs ‘bienal’” (doc. no. 1142737), both by Mário Belaúnde Guinassi (pseud.: Juan Gris); “Mala noche de Buendía” by Felipe Buendía (doc. no. 1142628">1142628); (untitled) [“Nos encontramos en un mundo determinado...”], by the Grupo Arte Nuevo (doc. no. 1142628">1142628); “Grupo Arte Nuevo” (anonymous) (doc. no. 1142834); “Resentido social” by Felipe Buendía (doc. no. 1142644); and “Treinta minutos de charla con la señora Gloria Benvenuto de Gómez Sánchez, nuevo valor de la Pintura Nacional” (anonymous) (doc. no. 1142413)].