The reviewer states that indigenist art has found “a new devotee” in Julia Codesido. Responding to her show in Lima in 1929, author Carlos Solari explains the painter has not taken a slavish stance, but rather has evolved slowly “in progressive absorption of the environment.” He believes the painter knows “that Sabogal is dedicated to showing us (…) the truth of the indigenous soul,” but, in his judgment, this is not a matter of imitation, but rather of following him “on the quest to discover truth through inquisitive contemplation.” Solari analyzes some works with Andean themes and points out that the show at the Academia Nacional de Música Alcedo also includes portraits and other items that illustrate life in the Peruvian capital. Solari also praises the artist’s achievements in her use of color.

This is the review by art critic Carlos Solari (under the pseudonym “Don Quijote”) of Julia Codesido’s first exhibition at the Academia Nacional de Música Alcedo (Lima, 1929). As opposed to her colleagues, Julia Codesido took on the indigenist art trend as the basis of a personal evolution that led her—in her mature years—to the very threshold of abstraction, combining the “visual discovery of the country with the inexorable eruption of modernity” [Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo. Julia Codesido (1938–1979): muestra antológica. (Lima: CCPUCP, 2004)]. Her career can be explained by her family’s migration to Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, where she became aware of the avant-garde art trends. Upon her return to Lima, she first attended the workshop of painter Teófilo Castillo, and later, with the opening of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (1919), she joined that institution. After she held her first exhibition at the Academia Nacional de Música Alcedo (Lima, 1929), she came to be considered an artist of the “vernacular trend”; nevertheless, her artistic personality distinguished itself for its expressive style (color and design). In 1931, she was appointed a professor at the ENBA, when she presented her second individual show, demonstrating more complex pictorial proposals. Her interest in the living culture of Peru led her to develop a style that avoided ethnography. In 1935, she became known on an international level when she became one of the first artists to hold an exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. The regard in which the Mexican muralists held her pictorial proposals permitted her access to the North American market, where she exhibited at the Delphic Studios Gallery in New York (1936) and the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (1937). [As complementary reading on Julia Codesido, see these texts in the ICAA digital archive: by Carmen Saco “Disciplina y sentido cósmico en los cuadros de Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1136583) and “Notas de arte: Exposición de pintura Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1136647); by Juan Puppo “El arte moderno de Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1136567); by Carlos Raygada “La exposición de Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1141261); by Raúl María Pereira “La exposición de Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1141245); by Clodoaldo López Merino (under the pseudonym “EGO”) “Exposición de pintura de Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1147874); (unattributed) “Impresiones de Julia Codesido después de su expos. en N. York” (doc. no. 1141277); by Aquiles Ralli “Julia Codesido y Sabogal son buenos pintores” (doc. no. 1150882); by J. C. M. “La exposición de Julia Codesido en la Academia Alzedo [sic]” (doc. no. 1141179); by Augusto Aguirre Morales “La obra pictórica de Julia Codesido” (doc. no. 1141196); and (unattributed) “México comenta el rotundo triunfo de Julia Codesido en Estados Unidos” (doc. no. 1141164). Likewise, see the letter written by the management and students of the ENBA to then-Peruvian President, Manuel Prado Ugarteche, asking him to reinstate Sabogal as director of the school, of which Codesido is a signatory (doc. no. 1140784)].