The author of this text, signed “Savonarola,” affirms that he and painter Enrique Domingo Barreda are old friends, and he remarks on Barreda’s outstanding personal qualities. Notwithstanding, the author believes that, due to his prolonged absence from the country, Barreda upholds a cosmopolitan notion of beauty in a context riddled by “rabid nationalism.” It is in response to Barreda’s criticism of what he sees as the shortsightedness of the advocates of Indianism that “Savonarola” voices ironic praise for Peru and its reality. He holds that hiring qualified professors like Julio Málaga Grenet to teach at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA)—a proposal put forth by Barreda—will bear no fruit in a context with no future. Barreda’s plea that “the school either be restructured or shut down” is meaningless in a country where the inoperativeness of institutions is the norm.

Signed with only the pseudonym “Savonarola,” this article in the format of a letter to Peruvian academic painter Enrique Domingo Barreda is a response to the article by him published in the same newspaper two days before (1943). [See in the ICAA digital archive these two related texts by Barreda: “Sobre el arte en el Perú: necesidad y obligación” (doc. no. 1289889) and “Algo sobre el arte en el Perú” (doc. no. 1143340)].

In 1943, after a period when there was almost no governmental support for the arts, the I Salón Municipal de Lima was launched as an attempt to remedy that situation. A great many artists abstained from participating in the event, however, due to the largely conservative jurors, among them Enrique Domingo Barreda, an influential academic painter. Although Barreda’s critical reflection on the salon was based on an attack on Indianism, the reigning tendency in Peruvian painting at the time, his critiques encompassed as well the academic criteria used to allocate awards. Supporters of modern art like Juan Ríos and Raúl María Pereira (1916–2007) criticized the triumph of the “photographic” style of José Gutiérrez Infantas (1897–1997), who was defended by conservative intellectual Mercedes Gallagher de Parks (1883–1950). Pereira’s rebuttal cast doubt on the legitimacy of the academicism of the day; he tacitly intended to posit a necessary tie between art and modernity. Paradoxically, the academic bent of the salon evidenced the final retreat of that tendency from the Peruvian scene, though Indianist critics and artists had played a role, albeit a minor one, in the previous decade. The modernist advance had considerable influence on the withdrawal of government support for pictorial Indianism; the founder of that movement, José Sabogal (1888–1956), was soon removed from his post as director of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes.