Author Juan Ríos continues his exchange of open letters by responding the publication of a letter in El Comercio (Lima, October 19, 1961), wherein Juan Acha defends himself against the accusation that he showed disrespect to Sérvulo Gutiérrez in the preface he wrote for the Exposición Homenaje organized by the IAC. On this occasion, Ríos thanks Acha for the clarifications he offered and states sarcastically: “I will always refuse to participate in anti-homages to that which exists. And, by simple logic, I will not participate in homages to that which does not exist.” He stresses that he has never argued with Acha regarding aesthetics, given that “would require that our ‘mental capacities’ be equal.” Because of this, he refuses to explain the meaning of a paragraph from his epilogue, which he believes Acha has caricatured. He stresses that the “quality of Sérvulo’s work does not need defenders. Words would not suffice.” He concludes by reiterating the two motivations behind his initial letter protesting the prologue to the catalogue: he is convinced that Acha’s critique is “definitively opposed” to Gutiérrez’s work; as such, “the aforementioned study should not have appeared in the Homage-Catalogue.”

This is the third letter sent by writer Juan Ríos (1914–91) to Edgardo Pérez Luna, art critic for El Comercio newspaper regarding the Exposición Homenaje for Sérvulo Gutiérrez organized by the IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo) in the Peruvian capital. In the letter, Ríos denounces the negative tone of the prologue for the catalogue of a show that was supposedly a tribute. Due to his “avant-garde faith,” the introductory text by Juan Acha (1916–95) argued that the work of the painter lacked the quality of “an artistic creation” because he believed this could only occur through an affiliation with the international avant-garde. Between October and November 1961, the IAC held an exhibition in homage to painter Sérvulo Gutiérrez in Lima. The show corresponded to the IAC’s ongoing work of revitalizing and promoting modern art within the country. It was also the second retrospective of the institution (the first was dedicated to the independent indigenist artist Mario Urteaga). The show had been motivated by the recent death of Gutiérrez and the role his work had played in the arts scene during the mid-twentieth century in Peru; above all for his contribution to the creation of a modern figurative art. Nevertheless, his forceful rejection of abstraction lacked the programmatic formulation needed to lend importance to his contributions to the local debates on the topic during the 1950s. The IAC’s show contributed to an assessment of his career within a context in which abstraction was already the lingua franca of the avant-garde in the country. From this perspective, the prologue to the catalogue, written by Acha, took a weighted assessment of his proposals that was interpreted by some as being against Gutiérrez. As a consequence of his “avant-garde faith,” Acha denied the work of this artist had the quality of an “artistic creation,” as he believed this value only belonged within the parameters of the international avant-garde. His critique chiefly argued that the painter lacked the “minimal mental capacity” to achieve abstraction, despite having reached the limits of figuration. One of Acha’s detractors, writer Juan Ríos, denounced the negative tone of the prologue (given that the exhibition was intended as an homage). [For additional information, see the following texts in the ICAA digital archive, all by Juan Acha: “Artes Plásticas: Sérvulo Gutiérrez” (doc. no. 1107586), “La pintura de Sérvulo” (doc. no. 1107534), “Polémica sobre el homenaje a Sérvulo: Juan Acha responde a Juan Ríos” (doc. no. 1107568), and “Polémica sobre el homenaje a Sérvulo: Juan Acha responde a Juan Ríos; hija de Sérvulo protesta porque el IAC se negó a exhibir el primer cuadro de su padre” (doc. no. 1107551)].