María Izquierdo is interviewed during her visit to Lima. The author of this article, known only by the pseudonym, “Tiziano” [Titian], considers the painter to be part of “the group of artists who are creating Mexican art based on an established idea, convinced that they are creating the universal art of tomorrow.” She then reports that in Mexico, it is understood that “every painter is imbued with her own personality.” This parallel “Mexican Renaissance” could provide “a new kind of visual art, a national style that becomes international.” In her opinion, the movement is important because it stresses its independence from European art. Latin America will create its own aesthetic “when Latin Americans feel truly proud of their racial background, their cultural roots, their civil history, and their own customs.” She states that Peruvian painting (José Sabogal, Julia Codesido, and Carmen Saco), whose past is as great as Mexico’s, is destined to contribute lofty aesthetic values to Latin America. She explains the teaching system used at plein air schools in Mexico that supports technical and scientific education. She mentions, in passing, that she had been against Diego Rivera’s “composition” course, which challenged the absolute freedom required for artistic creation. 

María Izquierdo and her husband Raúl Uribe Castillo, who was also a painter, arrived in Lima in mid-August 1944. They had both been sent on a cultural mission by the Mexican Ministry of Public Education. In contrast to David Alfaro Siqueiros’ fleeting visit to Peru’s capital city the previous year (to deliver a lecture in support of the Allies’ cause), Izquierdo presented her works at the Instituto Cultural Norteamericano de Lima. The event provided an exceptional opportunity to appreciate Mexican art as represented by one of the country’s leading artists, a first since the 1937 Lima exhibition of the collection of Ambassador Moisés Sáenz. Izquierdo’s visit coincided with waning support for indigenism, which had been removed from the curriculum at the main center of art education in Peru a year earlier after José Sabogal was dismissed from his position as director of the ENBA. On this occasion, María Izquierdo did not fail to emphasize the similar “Americanist” approach in both Mexican muralism and indigenism, two movements that were committed to finding a national aesthetic of their own that had nothing to do with European influences. Her remarks were a ringing vindication for the nationalist program, which encouraged pro-indigenist intellectuals and artists to promote the exhibition. The radical nature of Izquierdo’s work elicited a lukewarm response from Raúl María Pereira (1916–2007), the main champion of the cosmopolitan campaign for renewal in the local visual arts. This modernist critic considered much of Izquierdo’s primitivist work to be merely decorative, lacking the formalist, austere rigor of “pure visual arts.” He nonetheless acknowledged the expressiveness of the works that were shown at the local exhibition.