The draftsman Juan Devéscovi was one of the most interesting and (paradoxically) little-known members of the Peruvian artistic avant-garde of the 1920s. There are no detailed studies of his career; nevertheless, he was employed as an illustrator at a number of Lima magazines and worked in the modernist style of the period. In 1927, Devéscovi moved to Paris in search of better work opportunities and artistic inspiration, following in the steps of other Peruvian draftsmen, such as Julio Málaga Grenet (1886 –1963), César Moro (1903–1956), and Reynaldo Luza (1893–1978). While living in Paris, he was introduced to the avant-garde aesthetic by the cosmopolitan milieu. He met and befriended César Vallejo, Xavier Abril, the brothers Ernesto More (1897–1980) and Carlos More (1904–1944), and Juan Luis Velásquez (1903–1970), among others. The exhibition at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine [Latin American House] included Devéscovi’s drawings and Abril’s poems, and Jean Cassou and André Warnod wrote introductions for the catalogue. They both associated the deliberate primitivism of the works with the expression of a latent indigenous essence linked to a sort of Surrealist-inspired automatism. Warnod saw Devéscovi as one of the first Latin Americans to use elements taken from pre-Colombian art in a thoroughly modern way. In fact, César Vallejo (who also contributed an introduction to the catalogue) pointed out affinities between his automatic drawing and certain works from Pierre Marie’s collection of Art-Brut, which was exhibited at the Galería Vavin Raspail. In a letter, Devéscovi called his drawings “trash (…) to attract the attention” of Parisian critics (cited in Manuel Pantigoso, Pantigoso, fundador de los Independientes [Lima: URP, 2007], p. 81).