At the beginning of the 1930s, a new arts group arose in Lima: Los Duendes, a group of painters who embraced a symbolism with roots in literature that incorporated art deco elements, and whose aesthetic proposal was founded as an alternative to the prevailing indigenous art trend. Brought together around poet José María Eguren (1874–1942), the first and only collective exhibition of these “independent Peruvians” was held in June 1931. Antonino Espinosa Saldaña was the only member of the group who sustained an artistic career, although he did not participate in the show. Perhaps because of this, his work generated a brief exchange of opinions within the local scene on the elusive categorization of this type of presentation. In December 1933, Espinosa exhibited a collection of ceramics and tempera paintings, which included a pictorial interpretation (akin to abstraction) of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. With titles such as El tiempo [Time] and La inteligencia [Intelligence], the works claimed an allegorical density in a genre and style considered “decorative.” Critic Carlos Raygada pointed out this contradiction and questioned the relevance of the timid experimentalism present in some of his “movement” studies. The as yet unidentified F. H. Dursself praised the dynamism of these works, affirming their germinal role within a new avant-garde art.
In November 1946, Espinosa Saldaña—a representative of Casa Grace in Peru—traveled to Geneva as one of his country’s delegates at the II Meeting of the Textiles Commission of the International Work Organization. His first trip to Europe gave him the opportunity to confront the modernity of the metropolitan art scene in the context of “progressive” painting.At that time, his most experimental work incorporated Art Deco elements, something unusually daring for the arts scene in Peru. Upon his return from the Old World in 1947, Espinosa created a series of paintings composed of prisms, organic shapes, and close-ups of vegetation. Isolated on backgrounds that suggested depth, these images lacked any anecdotal purpose and they incorporated (in indirect form) elements of Surrealism and abstraction. In this presentation for an unrealized exhibition of these works, Espinosa offered a definition of “pure painting,” whose radicalism prefigures the stance taken by the Peruvian avant-garde in the 1950s.