In this text, Raúl María Pereira reflects on the history of painting in Peru, affirming that the Incan “genius in form and color” lived on despite the Spanish conquest, not as a parallel or marginal entity, but as a force that acted on “the very art brought over by the Spanish.” Pereira comments on how the Western conception of painting was reworked by the indigenous masters, giving origin to an authentic Spanishism forged by the native “decorative and ornamental genius.” That movement never developed fully, though, but rather disappeared in the face of the Europeanizing process that marked nineteenth-century art. The author addresses the work of the primary representatives of academic art, which was “European in form and background.” That tendency eventually led to the exclusive revalorization of the indigenous and attempts to create a local art called the “neo-Peruvian school” under the leadership of architect Piqueras Cotolí, an important advocate of Hispanic art in Peru. In Pereira’s view, the purpose of pictorial Indianism is to perform the dubious task of “salvaging as much Peruvianness [as possible].” Pereira is convinced that schools of that sort are only viable insofar as “a people has truly taken shape,” along with the consciousness that that entails—which is not the case in Peru. He questions the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA) under the direction of José Sabogal and advocates a thorough-going reform of that institution on the basis of a new conception, one that does not look only to the sierras but, rather, is open to new proposals by artists like Carlos Quízpez Asín and Ricardo Grau.

An art columnist for the newspaper La Prensa, Raúl María Pereira reviewed a great many exhibitions. Two of his most important essays set out to take stock of Peruvian painting from the first half of the twentieth century. The first of them was published in 1939, a year when attacks on Indianism grew harsher. It formed part of a wider discussion that included hostile comments by academic painter Enrique Domingo Barreda and by surrealist poet César Moro.

In this brief article, Pereira is extremely critical of Indianism and of the tenure of its primary framer, José Sabogal, as the director of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA). From the author’s formalist perspective, the Indianist agenda is incompatible with a true understanding of art. Three years later, he voiced an even more radical position in an essay that questioned not only Indianism, but also still-important academic artists from the beginning of the century. On the basis of the modernist European canon, Pereira attempted to do away with Peruvian art’s immediate past, providing a vision of twentieth-century Peruvian painting that was upheld for a long time. Juan Ríos looked to Pereira’s assessments in La pintura contemporánea en el Perú (1946). The two men had worked together at Nuestro Tiempo (1944), a journal that laid out new positions in Peruvian art. Unlike the eclectic Pereira, Ríos believed that Peruvian painting could only emerge with the transformation of the social conditions in the country—which is what had happened in Mexico. Ríos’s open communist sympathies were in concert with a period marked by political upheaval: democratically elected president Luis Bustamante y Rivero (in office from 1945 to 1948) was ousted by a military coup staged by General Manuel A. Odría.

[For additional information, see in the ICAA digital archive the following articles: Juan E. Ríos’s “La pintura contemporánea en el Perú” (doc. no. 1293275); Raúl María Pereira’s “Ensayo sobre la pintura peruana contemporánea (doc. no. 1293152); Carlos Raygada’s “La exposición de Ricardo Grau” (doc. no. 1146716); Carlos More’s “Ricardo Grau ha demostrado con su exposición ser el mejor representante de la plástica en el Perú” (doc. no. 1146600); Ricardo Grau’s “Lo que nos demuestra la Exposición de pintores chilenos: qué es lo que de ellos podemos aprender” (doc. no. 1146583); Luis Fernández Prada’s “Ayer se inauguró una exposición de gran aliento” (doc. no. 1144189); and Froylán Miranda Nieto’s “Elogio en forma de fusta” (doc. no. 1144173)].