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 (1888–1956), 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 solo exhibition at the Casino Español (1921), established his reputation. He joined the faculty at the new Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1920, where he was eventually appointed director (1932–43). There he trained a group of painters who joined the indigenist movement: Julia Codesido, Alicia Bustamante (1905–1968), Teresa Carvallo (1895–1988), Enrique Camino Brent (1909–1960), and Camilo Blas (1903–1985).
Mario Urteaga did not belong to the indigenist group led by Sabogal, but his work was generically part of that style. He taught himself to paint in Cajamarca, where he was born. He lived in Lima from 1903 to 1911, and when he returned to Cajamarca he worked for the local newspaper El Ferrocarril, reporting on science, art, and politics. He produced his first Indian-themed paintings in 1920. In 1923, encouraged by his nephew “Camilo Blas” (pseudonym used by Alfonso Sánchez Urteaga, the well-known painter in Sabogal’s group), he started pursuing his interest in vernacular subjects. During the 1920s, he painted in the costumbrista style (depicting residents of Cajamarca). In the following decade, his works entirely ignored creole scenes; instead, they portrayed Indian life against an idealized landscape.
In 1934, now a mature painter, Urteaga had his first exhibition in Lima (at the Academia Nacional de Música Alcedo). It was well-received by critics and viewers thanks to his country scenes that represented the ideals of indigenism: the “classicist” inspiration of his compositions helped to highlight the idea of an Andean cultural universe sans contradictions and immune to the passage of time (See Gustavo Buntinx and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, Mario Urteaga: nuevas miradas [Lima: Fundación Telefónica-MALI, 2003]). His work was also interpreted through the prism of international modernity because of its similarities to naive art, and was even compared to the major exponent of that style, Henri Rousseau. Neither opinion, however, takes into account the complexity of his painting. As noted by Buntinx (2003, p. 49), it is “a peripheral expression with its own sophistications, the most significant of which is a certain classical inspiration.”
In 1937, he had his second exhibition in Lima, which established his reputation among specialized critics. But his third exhibition (1938) attracted very little attention, and another was cancelled, because of a rising tide of local opposition to indigenist painting. In the mid-1930s local criticism of the (official and exclusive) movement drove Sabogal away from the ENBA (1943). This opinion became radicalized in the late 1940s when the avant-garde threw their weight behind abstract art. That mood of renewal and controversy was the backdrop to the exhibition organized by the IAC in honor of Urteaga (August 1955). The presence of the artist in Lima and the joint acknowledgment of his body of work were interpreted very differently by artists who embraced abstract and figurative art. Sabogal recognized a sense of what was “local” and “one’s own” in Urteaga’s paintings of his native Cajamarca. Fernando de Szyszlo referred to formal values that had nothing to do with the local emphasis in his works. In response to Szyszlo, Teodoro Núñez Ureta stated that the work of the honoree could not be assessed in terms of primitivist simplifications or aestheticizing speculations. None of them considered the pictorial complexity of Urteaga’s work.