In this essay, the author, after praising the arts of Peru for their acknowledged nationalistic direction and after recognizing the role of the ENBA (Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes), the author points out to certain explainable exaggerations as follows: “First, the imbalance between generic and the individual characteristics; Second, partisanship promoting the nationalist guidelines; Third, the annulment of the artistic personality due to school dogmatisms.” It was his opinion, that beauty though being “the main purpose to all art” had been overpowered in an exaggerated search for “character,” reaching “at the enormous absurdity of repudiating all likeliness found in portraits.” Luis Miró Quesada Garland points out that the artist must express the essences and “when an artist paints with symbols instead of painting images” runs the danger of expressing unrealistic schemes. Hitting the nail on the head regarding the Western character of the Peruvian culture and questioning “double mistakes of discarding the Spanish traditions and of circumscribing to the indigenous and the mountainous regions.” In his opinion, the teaching of the arts at the ENBA must strictly adhere to teaching with good technique.

This article was written by the Peruvian architect and theorist Luis Miró Quesada Garland on the indigenous art movement. It was written in response to Enrique Domingo Barreda, the academic artist who had attacked the predominant direction that was trending in Peruvian art, in a letter he sent from Paris, published in April 1939. [Please refer to the ICAA digital archive for the following letter by Barreda: “Algo sobre el arte en el Perú” (doc. no. 1143340) and “Sobre el arte en el Perú: necesidad y obligación” (doc. no. 1289889)] The controversial letter from Barreda elicited a trail of responses from the art critic Mercedes Gallagher de Parks [“Carta a Enrique Domingo Barreda sobre el arte en el Perú” (doc. no. 1143356)] and from the architect Luis Miró Quesada Garland, who later played a key role as a polemicist in the discussions on abstract art. While they both recognized the leading and protagonist role Sabogal played in the Peruvian artistic medium, they both rejected the dogmatic direction imposed by him at the ENBA. The confronted rejection by indigenous tendencies was extensive and included other governmental departments, evidenced when absent in the shipment from Peru to the Parisian International Exposition [of Art and Technology in Modern Life] in 1937 were the works by principal indigenous artists. However, the country’s successful participation at the contest was marked by a rhetoric that appealed to Pre-Columbian ornamentation or by ethnographic representation as a means of defining “Peruvian” art. Two years later, this identification between “the indigenous” and “the national” was the cause of violent critiques in the Peruvian artistic circles, and criticized by Enrique Domingo Barreda from Paris. Enormously influential in the highest levels of Peru, this pertinacious devotee of academic impressionism had developed an outstanding career as an artist in Europe. In 1918, he was central to the formation of the ENBA by promoting the hiring of the Spanish sculptor Manuel Piqueras Cotolí as professor at the institution. Thus, Barreda denied any possibility of artistic crossbreeding. Thereby, rejecting the prestigious theories of the Argentinean architects Martín Noel and Ángel Guido regarding colonial architecture, belittling the indigenous component of the neo-Peruvian style formulated by Piqueras himself. [Please refer to the ICAA digital archive and the following texts: “Varios artistas opinan que es absolutamente necesario reformar los Institutos de arte en el Perú” (doc. no. 1143159) and “Se impone una reforme en nuestros Institutos de arte, en el Perú” (doc. no. 1143192) by Ernesto and Federico More Barrionuevo; “Comprobando netamente nuestro juicio y los de nuestros artistas, la Escuela de Bellas Artes, en su exposición de clausura, ha puesto de manifiesto su fracaso” by Ernesto More (doc. no. 1143228); “Dieciséis años que la llamada Escuela de Bellas Artes, hace como que trabaja, y se consume estérilmente con el dinero del Fisco sin rendir ningún resultado: Como se asfixia el arte” by Ernesto More (doc. no. 1143210)].