Forging a popular art history

Indigenismo and the art of colonial Peru

ANANDA COHEN-APONTE

In 1968, Peru’s first art history department was along which the practice of art history developed in a
founded at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Latin American context.3
in Lima, dedicated primarily to the study of European art.1 It The largely unacknowledged art historical
would not be for another two decades that San Marcos and contributions by Peru’s indigenistas anticipated critical
other major Peruvian universities would offer courses and debates about indigenous agency and originality in
curricula geared toward the study of the nation’s artistic colonial Andean art that are commonly believed to have
patrimony, and particularly that of the colonial period originated much later in the century.4 They made their
(1534–1824).2 Nevertheless, art history had been scholarship visible to the public through articles that
practiced in Peru for nearly half a century before its appeared in newspapers in Lima, Cuzco, and Buenos
institutionalization at the university level. This article Aires, as well as Peruvian vanguard journals including
explores the overlooked contributions of members of Amauta, Illariy, Kuntur, and La Sierra.5 Increased interest
Peru’s indigenista and neoindianista movements to the in colonial art during the first half of the twentieth
initial study and documentation of colonial Andean art century can also be measured through correspondence
from the 1920s to the 1950s. I consider how this diverse initiated between various cultural institutions across the
group of interlocutors engaged in imagined dialogues with Americas in the planning of exhibitions and other
the colonial past through its most tangible manifestations:
paintings, sculpture, and architectural monuments. Their 3. While beyond the scope of this article, the emergence of
eclectic intellectual output, which took the form of essays colonial art history in Mexico set a crucial precedent for the Peruvian
in vanguard journals, documentary photographs, context, a topic which remains in need of further scholarly exploration.
speeches, and even works of art themselves, challenges The institutionalization of the discipline arrived earlier in Mexico City
with the establishment of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas
normative definitions of art historical research as an within the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in
exclusively textual endeavor that took place within a 1936, and even before this, colonial architecture figured heavily in
university or museum context. The artists, journalists, discussions of a national aesthetic within the context of the Mexican
amateur aficionados, and collectors under consideration revolution. See C. Bargellini, “Originality and Invention in the Painting
provide an instructive case study of the unique trajectories of New Spain,” in Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–
1581, exh. cat. (Denver, 2004), 79–91; and B. E. Mundy and A. M.
Hyman, “Out of the Shadow of Vasari: Towards a New Model of the
This research was supported by a Woodrow Wilson Career ‘Artist’ in Colonial Latin America,” Colonial Latin American Review 24,
Enhancement Fellowship (2015–16). I would like to thank Teo Allaín no. 3 (2015): 283–317.
Chambi of the Archivo Fotográfico de Martín Chambi; the staff of the 4. Gauvin Bailey, for instance, traces what he terms the “Great
Instituto Americano de Arte de Cuzco; the staff of the Instituto de Arte Debate” within colonial Latin American art history between hispanists
Peruano in Lima; Natalia Majluf and Jesús Varillas at the Museo de and indigenists to the 1960s and 1970s. See G. A. Bailey, C. R.
Arte de Lima; and Charles Walker, Zoila Mendoza, and José Ragas for Phillips, and L. Voigt, “Spain and Spanish America in the Early Modern
acquainting me with individuals and institutions in Peru. I gratefully Atlantic World: Current Trends in Scholarship,” Renaissance Quarterly 62,
acknowledge my research assistant Sara Garzón, as well as Ernesto no. 1 (2009): 9–14.
Bassi, Derek Burdette, Julia Chang, Emily Engel, María Fernández, 5. See, e.g., F. Cossío del Pomar, “La pintura en el Cuzco,” Revista
Michele Greet, Barbara Mundy, Horacio Ramos Cerna, and two Universitaria 12, nos. 41–42 (1923): 31–58; J. U. García, “El
anonymous reviewers for offering critical insights and suggestions in neoindianismo,” Kuntur 1, no. 2 (1928): 5–6; J. G. Gutiérrez, “Una
the preparation of this article. restauración bárbara,” Kuntur 1, no. 2 (1928): 33–34; J. U. García, “La
1. J. Mariazza Foy, “De lo artesanal a lo científico: Los procesos de arquitectura colonial del Cuzco,” Revista de Arte: Publicación
conservación y restauración en el Perú,” in Nuestra memoria puesta Bimestral de Divulgación de la Facultad de Bellas Artes de la
en valor: Patrimonio cultural del Perú, ed. R. Estabridis Cárdenas Universidad de Chile 2, no. 9 (1936): 8–13; J. V. A., “Protocolo de
(Lima, 2014), 47. 1916 [sic; 1716]: Concierto de Obra de Pintura y Dorado para la
2. One exception is the Escuela Nacional de Ingenieros, which Capilla de la Soledad del Cuzco,” Illariy: Órgano de la Academia de
offered courses in pre-Columbian and colonial Peruvian art from the Artes Plásticas 1, no. 1 (1942): 8; and M. Bena de Vela, “Ecletismo
1940s onward. I thank Horacio Ramos Cerna for providing me with pictórico de ayer y hoy,” Illariy: Órgano de la Academia de Artes
this information. Plásticas 1, no. 1 (1942): 7–8.

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274 RES 67/68 2016/2017

activities, much of which remains unexplored and Indigenismo, neoindianismo, and the visual arts
unpublished. Finally, and what remains most overlooked
The 1920s precipitated a flurry of intellectual activity
by colonial art historians, is the artistic output of
in the Andes dedicated to the valorization of the Indian
members of Peru’s indigenista movement, particularly
as a symbol of regional, national, and continental
artworks that evince careful visual documentation of
identities. Pioneered by the Marxist intellectual José
viceregal religious icons and monuments. I contend that
Carlos Mariátegui, the indigenismo movement in Peru
these artworks also qualify as crucial forms of research
sought to bring the country’s Andean identity to the front
that helped to disseminate knowledge about the
and center of nationalist discourse as a corrective to
country’s past aesthetic traditions, thus broadening our
centuries of marginalization and exploitation of its native
understanding of the varied, multimedia forms that art
communities. The movement enjoyed its apogee under
historical scholarship took during this early moment of
the leadership of president Augusto Leguía, who made
inquiry into the colonial past.
indigenismo state policy during his eleven years in
Because of the alternative venues in which art
office, known as the Oncenio de Leguía, from 1919 to
historical production occurred, the intellectual work of
1930.8 Vanguard journals published articles on politics,
Peru’s indigenistas rarely entered into the footnotes or
economics, culture, and art that focused on indigenous
bibliographies of the canonical survey books of the
issues, serving as a major conduit for the exchange of
1940s and 1950s that have come to be considered the
ideas among Peruvian intellectuals. Not merely relegated
discipline’s foundational texts.6 The absent citational
to textual production, indigenismo incorporated poetry,
footprint of these indigenista contributions has had long-
music, and art criticism into its fold, which were
lasting ramifications for the field of colonial Andean art
disseminated through art galleries, museums, and
history. We are thus faced with a rich body of
cultural centers sponsored by a number of state and
scholarship that has yet to be fully acknowledged within
private institutions.9
conventional historiographies of Andean art, whose
As many scholars have demonstrated, visual artists
inclusion would not only push back the date of the
played a vital role in the indigenismo movement in their
origins of colonial art historical inquiry in Peru but also
creation of a national aesthetic.10 Lima-based artists such
reframe our perceptions of how major trends in the field
as José Sabogal, who Mariátegui named Peru’s “first
have unfolded.7 A close examination of key
national painter,” Mario Urteaga, Julia Codesido,
documentary sources, both written and visual, can clue
Enrique Camino Brent, Alicia Bustamante, and Camilo
us into the efforts of Peruvian artists and intellectuals
Blas (the pseudonym of José Alfonso Sánchez Urteaga,
alike in the documentation, preservation, and
nephew of Mario), among others, dedicated themselves
dissemination of knowledge on their own artistic
to painting native peoples engaged in traditional
heritage during a critical moment of national identity
formation.

6. A. Guido, Fusión hispano-indígena en la arquitectura colonial

(Buenos Aires, 1925); M. J. Buschiazzo, Estudios de arquitectura 8. See M. E. García, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities,
colonial hispano americana (Buenos Aires, 1944); E. Harth-Terré, Education, and Multicultural Development in Peru (Palo Alto, CA,
Artífices en el Virreinato del Perú (Lima, 1945); H. E. Wethey, Colonial 2005), 63–71.
Architecture and Sculpture in Peru (Westport, CT, 1949); P. Kelemen, 9. Though not exhaustive, the following works explore various
Baroque and Rococo in Latin America (New York, 1951); and G. facets of Peruvian indigenismo: J. Tamayo Herrera, Historia del
Kubler and M. Soria, Art and Architecture of Spain and Its American indigenismo cuzqueño, siglos XVI–XX (Lima, 1980); M. Lauer, Andes
Dominions (Baltimore, 1959) offer a panoramic view of South imaginarios: Discursos del indigenismo 2 (Cuzco, 1997); M. de la
America’s abundant colonial monuments and masterpieces. These Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in
survey texts continue to serve as the backbone of the discipline of Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991 (Durham, NC, 2000); Y. López Lenci, El
colonial art history into the present day. Cusco, paqarina moderna: Cartografía de una modernidad e
7. A notable exception is Pablo Macera, who writes briefly on the identidades en los Andes peruanos (1900–1935) (Lima, 2004); Z. S.
influence of the indigenistas in the formulation of the notion of Mendoza, Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in
“mestizo art”; P. Macera, La pintura mural andina, siglos XVI–XIX Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC, 2008); J. Coronado, The Andes Imagined:
(Lima, 1993), 46–60. For historiographical overviews of the field of Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity (Pittsburgh, 2009); and P.
colonial Latin American art, see Bailey, Phillips, and Voigt, “Spain and Archibald, Imagining Modernity in the Andes (Lewisburg, PA, 2011).
Spanish America”; and L. E. Alcalá, “‘Where Do We Go from Here?’ 10. D. Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of
Themes and Comments on the Historiography of Colonial Art in Latin the Andean Image World (Princeton, NJ, 1997); M. Greet, Beyond
America,” in Art in Spain and the Hispanic World: Essays in Honor of National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in
Jonathan Brown, ed. S. Schroth (London, 2010), esp. 325–29. Andean Art, 1920–1960 (University Park, PA, 2009).

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 275

customs set against picturesque Andean landscapes.11 consider oneself Indian.”16 While scholars have
They established networks with artists and intellectuals commonly framed indigenismo within discourses of
across Latin America through print culture as well as modernity in the literary and visual arts, the movement’s
travel. European modernist currents in the visual arts contributions to the study of the colonial artistic past
played an important role in the training of these artists, merits further consideration. As such, the present study
but they drew their greatest inspiration from emphasizes the underexplored relationship that many of
contemporaries closer to home. In particular, the its members had to the formation of art history in Peru,
Mexican muralists exerted an undeniable influence not and the ways they characterized colonial art to reflect
only on Peruvian artists, but on Ecuadorian artists as regional and national agendas.
well, facilitated in part through the reproduction of While Lima-based artists were researching pre-
Diego Rivera’s murals in Amauta. As Michele Greet Columbian and colonial art to produce an art history of
notes, Amauta was among the first journals outside of the nation that could be disseminated across intellectual
Mexico to reproduce his murals for a pan-Latin and artistic circuits in the capital, a group of scholars,
American readership.12 Moreover, in 1940 a Peruvian artists, and activists based in the highland city of Cuzco
delegation consisting of famed writer José María were committing themselves to a similar endeavor.
Arguedas, José Uriel García, and others attended the first Cuzco intellectual José Uriel García founded the
Congreso Indigenista Interamericano in Pátzcuaro, neoindianista (New Indianist) movement, laying out his
Mexico, which facilitated pan-American dialogues about ideas in a series of articles in Amauta (1926–27) and
the integration of indigenous peoples into the nation- Kuntur (1927), the seeds of which would culminate in
state.13 In addition to Peruvian artists traveling to his influential book, El nuevo indio, first published in
Mexico, Mexican art also entered into Peruvian 1930, with a second revised edition in 1937.17 This book
collections during this period. One especially prominent presented a platform advocating the primacy of the
collector was Mexico’s ambassador to Peru, Moisés Saénz. “New Indian” constructed around the fusion of Inca and
His collection of Mexican art—featuring work by Rivera, Spanish identities. Neoindianismo posited that a true
Orozco, and Siqueiros—was exhibited in Lima in 1937.14 Andean identity consisted of both indigenous and
Drawing on precedents set in Mexico, Peruvian artists Spanish elements, whose origins could be traced to the
used the media of painting, drawing, and printmaking to colonial period.18 García established neoindianismo in
celebrate the indigenous presence in Peru. Their response to dominant indigenista perceptions that an
idealized scenes of native Andeans participating in “authentic” Indian identity resided in the Inca past, and
festivities or solemnly gazing at the viewer in full-scale specifically as a rebuttal to his colleague Luis Valcárcel’s
portraits evinced a significant disconnect between the seminal 1927 work, Tempestad en los Andes.19 García’s
artists and the contemporary social realities of the work entered into pan-Latin American debates on
communities they purported to represent, however. mestizaje, which he referred to as “amestizamiento,”
Indeed, one of the central contradictions of indigenismo almost certainly influenced by Mexican scholar José
is that for all of its emphasis on indigenous inclusion, the Vasconcelos’s groundbreaking La raza cósmica,
movement was driven almost exclusively by non-Indian published just five years prior in 1925.20
people.15 Or as Natalia Majluf succinctly put it, “the
16. N. Majluf, “El indigenismo en México y Perú: Hacía una visión
only requirement for being an indigenista is to not
comparativa,” in Arte, historia e identidad en América: Visiones
comparativas; XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte, vol. 2,
ed. G. Curiel, R. González Mello, and J. Gutiérrez Haces (Mexico City,
1994), 615.
11. See A. Zevallos, Tres pintores cajamarquinos: Mario Urteaga, 17. See J. U. García, “El neoindianismo,” “La música incaica,”
José Sabogal, Camilo Blas (Cajamarca, 1991); N. Majluf and L. E. Amauta 1, no. 2 (1926): 11–12, “El nuevo indio,” Amauta 2, no. 8
Wuffarden, Camilo Blas (Lima, 2010), and Sabogal (Lima, 2013). (1927): 19–25, and El nuevo indio: Ensayos indianistas sobre la sierra
12. Greet, Beyond National Identity, 75–77; “Diego Rivera: surperuana, 1st ed. (Cuzco, 1930).
Biografía sumaria,” Amauta 1, no. 4 (1926): 5–8; E. Pavletich, “Diego 18. On the differences between indigenismo and neoindianismo,
Rivera: el artista de una clase,” Amauta 2, no. 5 (1927): 5–8. see Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity, 168–97; and Mendoza,
13. Coronado, The Andes Imagined, 69. Creating Our Own, 6–12.
14. Majluf and Wuffarden, Camilo Blas, 17. 19. L. E. Valcárcel, Tempestad en los Andes (Lima, 1927).
15. See E. Tarica, The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism 20. Although beyond the scope of this article, a comparative
(Minneapolis, 2008), xi–xxx, 1–29. See also Coronado, The Andes perspective on discourses of mestizaje across Latin America would
Imagined, 16–18. For a Cuzco-centered perspective on this issue, see offer fruitful insights into transnational dialogues around issues of race
Mendoza, Creating Our Own, 10–13. and nationhood during the first half of the twentieth century.

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276 RES 67/68 2016/2017

Art history remained central to García’s vision of colonial art as an artifact of an irretrievable past, but
neoindianismo, despite the fact that the majority of instead incorporated it into an ongoing dialogue with
scholarship on the movement has focused on its literary, contemporary artists in the forging of a new artistic
performative, and musical manifestations.21 Since the language.
very beginning of his career, García took a special
interest in the colonial art and architecture of Cuzco,
Artists as researchers
researching and publishing on the city’s major Inca and
colonial monuments as early as 1922, and even In order to understand the role of art history in the
coauthoring a tourist guide to the city with archaeologist work of Peru’s indigenista artists, we must first consider
Albert Giesecke in 1925.22 García saw colonial art as the the extensive intellectual production that went into their
ideal representative of the neoindianist spirit because of artworks.25 The unpublished archives of José Sabogal
its connection to both European and Inca aesthetic and Camilo Blas, for example, consist of notebooks filled
systems. In El nuevo indio, he opens his chapter on with notes on Inca and colonial Peruvian history,
neoindian art with the following declaration: “Colonial sketches of colonial churches, and works of art that
art represents the maximum ascension of that reveal an almost obsessive attention to detail in their
neoindianist spirit that germinated from the conquest, visual documentation. They consulted colonial texts in
and in an essential way, from architecture.”23 He takes it an effort to imbue their paintings with historical
a step further by positing that colonial art is not simply a veracity.26 Although this art historical labor was intended
fusion of two cultures, citing the ideas put forth by to inform the creation of artworks rather than to stand as
Argentine architect Ángel Guido in his 1925 book an autonomous body of scholarship, it nevertheless
Fusión hispano-indígena en la arquitectura colonial. constitutes an important early intervention in the study
Rather, García argues, this intercultural mixture of colonial art.
endowed indigenous art with an unparalleled richness Visual artists also played a vital role in the
and vitality that cannot be parsed out into its respective codification of an art historical genealogy of Peru that
cultural categories: “This art of fusion is not simply an began in the colonial era and culminated in the
amalgamation of two artistic traditions added together. . . “popular art” (arte popular) of the contemporary
rather, it has the value of an original creation, one that is period.27 The majority of the individuals discussed here
not merely a third element made or obtained by two
components. For this fusion is not precise or exclusively 25. With respect to Sabogal’s frescoes at the Hotel Cuzco, for
objective, but above all, it is a psychological fusion, a instance, Michael Schreffler and Jessica Welton discuss the numerous
spiritual process, the advent of a new emotion. Better visual and textual sources that informed his composition: M. J.
said, it is the result of a soul that germinates, endowed Schreffler and J. Welton, “Garcilaso de La Vega and the ‘New Peruvian
Man’: José Sabogal’s Frescoes at the Hotel Cuzco,” Art History 33,
with the same creative energy that produced the
no. 1 (2010): 137–45.
precolonial monuments.”24 García advanced alternative 26. Blas’s archives, for instance, include a 31-page notebook and
periodizations and terminology for colonial art—here 12 additional pages of handwritten notes that document the history of
utilizing the term neoindiano—recognizing even at this Inca kings, as well as a section on weaving and vestments extracted
early moment in the development of Peruvian art from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chronicles, such as those by
Juan de Betanzos and Bernabé Cobo. See Museo de Arte de Lima
historical discourse the insufficiency of European stylistic
(hereafter MALI), Archivo de Arte Peruano, C. Blas, “Datos de los
terminology such as “Renaissance” or “Baroque” for cronistas” (not dated), XCB-ES001, and “Indumentaria Incaica” (not
classifying Andean art. But perhaps most importantly, dated), XCB-ES002. Sabogal’s textual archives are even more
García and his Limeño colleagues did not conceive of extensive. MALI houses early drafts of all of his major essays, including
“La cúpula en América” (1939), “Mates burilados y estampas” (1944),
and “Recopilación de observaciones sobre el Arte en el Perú” (1939–
21. See Tamayo Herrera, Historia del indigenismo cuzqueño, 197– 40). See MALI, Archivo de Arte Peruano, José Sabogal, XJS-ES003, XJS-
213; Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity, 182–87; Mendoza, Creating ES004, XJS-ES015, and XJS-ES051. These are all published in their final
Our Own, 9–10; and Archibald, Imagining Modernity, 37–43. format in J. Sabogal Diéguez, Obras literarias completas (Lima, 1989).
22. J. U. García, La ciudad de los Incas: Estudios arqueológicos In addition to their notes and essays on pre-Columbian and colonial
(Cuzco, 1922), and “El Cuzco de la Colonia,” Revista Universitaria 44– art, both Blas and Sabogal produced an extensive series of sketches,
45 (1924); J. U. García and A. A. Giesecke, Cuzco Historical and many with annotations. These drawings are now accessible through
Artistic Guide (Lima, 1925). MALI’s online archive of Peruvian art, ARCHI: Archivo Digital de Arte
23. J. U. García, El nuevo indio: Ensayos indianistas sobre la sierra Peruano: http://www.archi.pe/.
surperuana, 2nd ed. (Cuzco, 1937), 122. 27. Although beyond the scope of this article, there did exist a
24. Ibid., 124. countercurrent of artists and scholars who rejected the ascription of

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 277

conceptualized the colonial period rather than the pre- art . . . comes from the sixteenth century, and tells us,
Columbian era as the natural starting point for an art through its candid expression, of the disquieting process
history of the nation because of its perceived continuity of our modern formation through the influence of the
with artistic movements of the nineteenth and two ancestral cultures.”32 Despite its frequent
twentieth centuries.28 Peru’s sustained intellectual and characterization as timeless or ahistorical, the invention
artistic engagement with Mexico during this period, of popular art has very specific historical origins.
which witnessed the institutionalization of folk traditions Wrought by indigenous hands in highland regions that
in the effort to promote a Mexican national identity, were geographically and culturally removed from the
helps explain the explosion of Andean popular art in the metropolitan and creole-dominated capital city, popular
1920s and 1930s.29 art attracted indigenista artists during the 1930s as a
Popular art was best exemplified by portable retablos body of work to be actively collected, emulated, and
(altarpieces) from the Ayacucho region, handwoven displayed as authentic specimens of the nation.
textiles, mates (pyroengraved gourds), and carved and This patron-client relationship between non-Indian
painted santos (saints) crafted by indigenous artists.30 “artists” and indigenous “artisans” paradoxically
While “popular art” in direct English translation tends to reinforced colonial legacies despite the former’s best
carry the connotation of “pop” or popular culture, in a intentions of valorizing popular art as the exemplar of a
Latin American context, lo popular referred to an art “of Peruvian national aesthetic. To take one example, the
the people,” whose more accurate idiomatic translation artist Alicia Bustamante and her sister Celia traveled
would be “folk art.” Even further distinctions exist within extensively to Ayacucho to collect miniature retablos
Latin America; in Mexico, arte popular often denoted an under the auspices of the Instituto de Arte Peruano,
art that was perceived to be completely uncontaminated founded by Sabogal in 1931. Their most active period of
by European influence.31 In Peru, however, travel was in the early 1940s, when the sisters met the
contemporaries recognized arte popular as a famed retablo maker Joaquín López Antay. The
quintessentially mestizo art rooted in both pre- Bustamantes, along with many other collectors of
Columbian and Hispanic traditions. These objects popular art, dictated the types of themes that they
became valorized as encapsulating a Peruvian artistic wished López Antay to include in the retablos they
spirit that resisted European periodizations and commissioned from him. Even the name of the genre
hierarchies of value. As Sabogal himself states, “popular itself changed. Locals referred to these portable
altarpieces as sanmarcos because many were dedicated
to Saint Mark, the patron saint of cattle, to ensure the
well-being of their herds. The indigenistas rebranded
colonial art as a point of origin for a Peruvian history of art. See M. them as retablos in order to make them more intelligible
Portal, “El arte peruano antiguo como elemento de afirmación racial,”
to a Limeño audience.33 As María Eugenia Ulfe points
El Comercio, June 5, 1927; and C. Feuereisen, “Hacia una arquitectura
y una decoración autóctona,” Arquitectura y Arte Decorativo, October 7, out, the Bustamantes precipitated the “hybridization and
1929. folkloricization” of López Antay’s work.34 In an ironic
28. This phenomenon is linked to a broader historiographical twist, some of the same forces that shaped the
impulse to detach pre-Columbian art from art histories of Latin intercultural negotiations that we see manifested in
America, as Cecelia Klein has so convincingly argued. See C. F. Klein,
colonial Andean art also find subtle reverberation in the
“Not Like Us and All the Same: Pre-Columbian Art History and the
Construction of the Nonwest,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 42 transformation of popular art over two centuries later. It
(2002): 133. would serve us well, then, to keep in mind the ongoing
29. See Majluf and Wuffarden, Camilo Blas, 17. On the influence asymmetrical power dynamics that often came to bear in
of Mexican collecting practices on Peru’s indigenistas, see Majluf, “El the creation of so-called hybrid art, whether in the
indigenismo en México y Perú,” 621.
30. R. Mujica Pinilla, “Sobre imagineros e imaginarios andinos:
Algunas cuestiones metodológicas e históricas,” in Orígenes y
devociones virreinales de la imaginería popular, ed. P. P. Alayza and
F. Torres (Lima, 2008), 14–31, and “El objeto utilitario como belleza 32. Archivo del Instituto de Arte Peruano, folder 13, “Actividades
superior: La artesanía tradicional en la Colección Liébana,” in Del cumplidas por el Instituto de Arte Peruano” (not dated; probably 1954),
cielo y la tierra: La colección de arte popular peruano de Vivian y fol. 31.
Jaime Liébana, ed. B. Hare and E. González (Lima, 2011), 9–19. 33. M. E. Ulfe, “Representaciones del (y lo) indígena en los
31. K. Cordero Reiman, “Del mercado al museo: La valoración retablos peruanos,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Études Andines 38,
estética del arte popular, 1910–1950,” in Museo Nacional de Arte: no. 2 (2009): 312–14.
Salas de la colección permanente (Mexico City, 1989). 34. Ibid., 314.

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278 RES 67/68 2016/2017

colonial period itself or during postcolonialism’s longue

durée.35
The reification of contemporary “popular art”
necessitated the establishment of direct stylistic
continuity with past traditions to justify its role as the
enduring evocation of a shared national identity, whose
origins were anachronistically traced back to the
colonial era. It was precisely at the moment when
popular art was being invented that artists and
intellectuals committed themselves to a search for its
origins. In fact, popular art and colonial art bore a
number of thematic similarities. Both genres were
interpreted as displaying a loose allegiance to European
precedents, but thoroughly imbricated within Andean
aesthetic and cultural worldviews. The study of colonial
artistic traditions of the highland region in particular,
where indigenous aesthetic and cultural practices
endured throughout the postconquest period, was thus
key for historicizing popular art. The result was a
cohesive art history of the nation that remained
untethered to European canons and time lines.36
Numerous trips, exhibitions, and artistic
collaborations led to an increased presence of colonial
art both in public space and in Peru’s cultural
consciousness throughout the first half of the twentieth
century. Among the earliest of these research trips was
José Sabogal and Camilo Blas’s stay in Cuzco in 1925.37 Figure 1. Camilo Blas, studies of the Corpus Christi
The artists documented a variety of sites, landscapes, procession in Cuzco, ca. 1925–27. Pencil on paper, 45.5 x
and works of art throughout the region. But beyond their 35.7 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, donation from the
production of compositions that depicted Cuzqueño Colección Petrus y Verónica Fernandini, 2008.3.784a–b.
mestizo and indigenous life, the artists conducted Photo: Courtesy of ARCHI: Archivo Digital de Arte Peruano,
Museo de Arte de Lima. Color version available as an online
research on the aesthetic traditions of the region. Blas,
enhancement.
for example, produced a series of pencil drawings
depicting the religious statues brought out onto the
materials, such as silver and gold crowns. This attention
streets of Cuzco on Corpus Christi (fig. 1). These
to detail indicates Blas’s commitment to accurately
sketches are painstakingly annotated, documenting the
portraying not just Cuzco’s Corpus Christi celebration,
colors of the figures’ clothing and other decorative
but the specific religious objects and works of art that
were processed through the city’s streets. The hundreds
35. Speaking about the similarly contested term “syncretism” of sketches and watercolors that make up Blas’s oeuvre
within the context of Afro-Cuban religiosity, Jalane Schmidt’s point is demonstrate his zeal in meticulously documenting
no less relevant to the Andean context: “‘Syncretism’ is not an
unproblematic ‘dialogue,’ a harmonious unification, or an unconscious
Andean life, and particularly the art and material culture
religious adoption, as is too often imagined, but more often an of highland Peru.38
adaptation born of conflict, the result of a hostile history of the Beyond his numerous drawings of facial expressions
conditions of ‘mixture.’” J. D. Schmidt, Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of and figures in a variety of poses and configurations, Blas
Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba (Durham, NC, 2015), 92. expended equal attention to the intricacies of viceregal
36. For further reflection on the entanglement of folk art and
colonial art from the perspective of early English-language scholarship,
architecture, altars, religious statues, musical
see Charlene Villaseñor Black, “Race and the Historiography of instruments, and textiles. He chose to depict not the
Colonial Art,” in Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in
Iberia and Latin America, ed. P. Patton (Leiden, 2016), 316–18. 38. In addition to the reproductions of Blas’s sketches in Majluf
37. See Majluf and Wuffarden, Sabogal, 19–23, and Camilo Blas, and Wuffarden, Camilo Blas, see MALI’s online database, which
24–33, 92–99. contains hundreds more: http://www.mali.pe/coleccionvirtual/.

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 279

modern and imported, but works of art and material in their mission statement, the IAP was dedicated to
culture with origins in the pre-Columbian and colonial “artistic development through the diverse cultural
periods. One could even think of such sketches as a manifestations of ancient Peru, seeking the continuation
form of visual note-taking and scholarship. Blas’s artistic of the national artistic process.”41 Inherent in this
production was driven by a desire to insert his work into statement is an interest in the recognition of past artistic
a broader history of art. In an unpublished document traditions as a means of reinvigorating the artistic climate
that Blas wrote in preparation for an interview, he argues of the present. In 1946 the organization synthesized its
that artistic universality and the particularities of culture three platforms, which had begun to materialize a
are not mutually exclusive: “The enthusiasm for decade prior: the photographic documentation of
universalism or transcendence in art through the colonial architecture; the founding of a museum of
utilization of more or less general or abstract themes is artesanía (crafts) and popular art (which would become
also a priori and false. . . . For it is through the intimate the Museo de la Cultura Peruana, founded that same
and the proximate that universal essences emerge. The year); and the production of booklets dedicated to
history of art shows us a thousand examples of this. Who different genres of popular art.42 A simultaneous interest
is more vocally anecdotal and picturesque than Bruegel, in popular art and its colonial foundations were thus
Goya, Cervantes—not to mention others—and currently interwoven in the very infrastructure of the IAP. The
all of Mexican painting? And Renoir, Van Gogh, Manet. scholarship that these artists produced could therefore
Did they not paint anecdotal costumbrista [national take on a number of creative forms that went beyond the
customs] scenes of their country and time period?”39 Blas survey textbook or catalog format.
likely articulated this statement in defense of As a case in point, Blas produced a series of pencil
representational art as abstraction assumed a growing sketches and watercolors of colonial art under the
presence in Peru’s artistic circles. But more importantly auspices of the IAP. At some point between 1931 and
for our purposes, Blas locates his aesthetic expression in 1940, he produced a small study of designs from a
dialogue with great European and Mexican painters colonial tapestry replete with flying birds, vizcachas, and
who also documented the lives and customs of their ccantu flowers (fig. 2). The tempera painting bears
countrymen. We can also detect a subtle critique of the striking similarities to a textile (which was likely used as
apparatus of art history in Blas’s move to de-universalize a seat covering) from the late sixteenth or early
Europe’s canonical artists by reminding the reader that seventeenth century then housed at the Museo
they too, like Peru’s indigenistas, were concerned with Universitario in Cuzco (now known as the Museo Inka),
the anecdotal and the quotidian. Blas and his colleagues suggesting that Blas sat in front of this object on display
believed that the art of Peru was not and would never be and carefully documented aspects of its design (fig. 3).43
part of a “universal” art history—a sentiment shared by While it does not precisely copy the original, his study
García in El nuevo indio—and that it was thus up to pays homage to its content and style: the horizontal
them to construct an art history of the nation with its arrangement, coloration, and delineation of the vegetal
own canon and figureheads. and faunal elements closely resemble those decorating
In 1931, Sabogal established the Instituto de Arte the tapestry.
Peruano (IAP) in Lima and appointed Blas as head Blas’s painted study of this colonial tapestry
technical illustrator (dibujante técnico). The IAP served participates in a tradition that has occupied an
as the primary institutional vehicle through which artists ambivalent space in the historiography of Latin
traveled, researched, and visually documented Peru’s American art: the act of copying.44 Latin American artists
colonial and contemporary artistic patrimony.40 As noted
41. Quoted in Villegas, “El Instituto de Arte Peruano,” 21.
39. C. Blas, “Cual es su concepto de pintura moderna” (1951), 42. Archivo del Instituto de Arte Peruano, folder 11, “Informe
MALI, Archivo de Arte Peruano, XCB-ES003, fol. 4. A strikingly similar sobre sus actividades (not dated; probably 1951), fols. 41–45.
statement can be found in the Argentine scholar Ricardo Rojas’s 1924 43. On the textile cover, see E. Phipps, J. Hecht, and C. Esteras
work, Eurindia: R. Rojas, Eurindia: Ensayo de estética fundado en la Martín, The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830
experiencia histórica de las culturas americanas (Buenos Aires, 1924), (New York, 2004), 335, 337.
300–301. 44. On the status of the copy in colonial Latin American art, see
40. F. Villegas, “El Instituto de Arte Peruano (1931–1973): José C. Dean, “Copied Carts: Spanish Prints and Colonial Peruvian
Sabogal y el mestizaje en arte,” Illapa, no. 3 (2006): 21–34, and “José Paintings,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 1 (1996): 98–110, and “The Renewal of
Sabogal y el arte mestizo: El Instituto de Arte Peruano y sus acuarelas” Old World Images and the Creation of Colonial Peruvian Visual
(PhD diss., Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2008). Culture,” in Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America,

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280 RES 67/68 2016/2017

Figure 2. Camilo Blas, study of a colonial tapestry, ca. 1931–40. Tempera and pencil on
paper, 17.6 x 26.8 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, donation from the Colección Petrus y
Verónica Fernandini, 2008.3.1186. Photo: Daniel Giannoni. Courtesy of ARCHI: Archivo
Digital de Arte Peruano, Museo de Arte de Lima. Color version available as an online
enhancement.

have consistently contested the pervasive trope of the instruction of Peruvian youth, in the case of Izcue, or as
slavish copyist, a damaging characterization whose inspiration for modern monuments and works of art.46
origins can be traced to the colonial period itself. As This aesthetic rediscovery and celebration of Peru’s
García emphatically stated with respect to colonial artistic past marked an important moment in galvanizing
architecture, “it is not, then, a derivative art but a scholarly interest in pre-Columbian and colonial art. The
substantive art,” indicating his awareness of the act of art historical research and documentation, then,
reductive attitudes toward the art of the colonial period, did not consist solely of descriptions, visual analyses,
even at this early stage.45 What we are witnessing here is and attributions. It also entailed the visual emulation of
not merely an act of copying, but Blas’s participation in colonial artworks in the interest of capturing a particular
the visual archiving of Peru’s colonial material culture, a stylistic and iconographic moment in the development
process that was just beginning to be set in motion by of an Andean aesthetic tradition. Blas produced a new
members of the indigenista circles. The artists Elena work of art from the original colonial textile through an
Izcue, Rafael Tupayachi, and Francisco Ernesto Olazo act of visual translation and interpretation that itself
produced extensive repertoires of pre-Columbian designs became subsumed within a new historiographical
and motifs that were intended to be used either for the moment. Blas’s sketches engaged in the visual citation

46. See N. Majluf and L. E. Wuffarden, Elena Izcue: El arte

ed. D. Fane (New York, 1996), 171–82; Bargellini, “Originality and precolombino en la vida moderna (Lima, 1999); E. Kuon Arce et al.,
Invention”; T. Cummins, “The Indulgent Image: Prints in the New Cuzco–Buenos Aires: Ruta de intelectualidad americana (1900–1950)
World,” in Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, ed. (Lima, 2009), 326–46; R. Gutiérrez Viñuales, “M. Piqueras Cotolí:
I. Katzew (Los Angeles, 2006), 203–25; and A. Ojeda di Ninno, “El Ancestralidad y modernidad en el arte peruano,” in Andalucía y
grabado como fuente del arte colonial: Estado de la cuestión,” in De América: Patrimonio artístico, ed. R. López Guzmán (Granada, 2011),
Amberes al Cusco: El grabado europeo como fuente del arte virreinal, 189–211; and C. Vargas Pacheco, “Una visión del Perú a través del
ed. C. Michaud and J. Torres della Pina (Lima, 2009), 15–22. arte decorativo: El arte peruano en la escuela de Elena Izcue,”
45. García, El nuevo indio, 2nd ed., 124 (emphasis original). Mercurio Peruano 524 (2011): 151–73.

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 281

Figure 3. Small cover, southern Andes, late sixteenth–early seventeenth century. Tapestry weave, cotton warp, and camelid weft,
49 x 16 3/4 in. Museo Inka, Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, MO-Tex 294 ant. 727. Photo: Courtesy of the
Museo Inka. Color version available as an online enhancement.

and paraphrasing of earlier artistic traditions, thereby which, coupled with a well-oriented concept, can allow
participating in the formation of their own art historical for the flourishing of a painting [style] that corresponds
genealogies. exactly with our time.”48 Through their research,
The members of the IAP utilized their artistic skills as collecting practices, and depictions of both colonial and
a means of reckoning with the richness and historical popular art, indigenista artists self-consciously inscribed
depth of Peru’s artistic patrimony. They disseminated this their own work into a Peruvian history of art while also
message across a number of channels that included but participating in its meticulous documentation.
were not in the exclusive domain of traditional Sabogal’s El desván de la imaginería peruana,
scholarship. The walls of the Museo de la Cultura published just months before his death in 1956, can be
Peruana were covered with expert watercolor and seen as the culmination and synthesis of his lifelong
graphic renditions of keros (ritual drinking vessels), commitment to the study of Peru’s artistic patrimony.49 El
mates, retablos, and an array of iconography drawn from desván explores colonial churches as the forgotten
the museum’s collection of popular art. Through the “museums” of Peru, filled with colonial artistic treasures
contemporary visual emulation of objects from the in desperate need of study and conservation.50 The book
recent and distant past, these artists mediated and begins with a first-person account of Sabogal’s
shaped a vision of Peruvian art history. As Sabogal stated experiences walking through the streets and into the
in one of his reports on the activities of the IAP, “each churches and casonas (colonial mansions) of Cuzco.
one of the artist-painters that make up this Institute are Sabogal paints a vivid picture of deteriorating churches
discoverers, and as such, admirers of the artistic capacity filled with abandoned treasures. He transports the reader
of our pueblo.”47 This view of artists as avid researchers to a quasi-fantastical world of crumbling altarpieces and
and preservers of culture is echoed in a 1936 essay by
Chilean scholar María Valencia: “The new painters have
the experience of these first researchers [Sabogal, 48. M. Valencia, “Pintores peruanos indigenistas,” Revista de Arte:
Blas, Codesido, and Saco]: the formidable technical Publicación bimestral de divulgación de la Facultad de Bellas Artes
documentation of colonial Cuzqueño painting and the de la Universidad de Chile 2, no. 9 (1936): 22.
contribution of all of the marvelous popular creations, 49. On Sabogal’s artistic production as it pertained to issues of
national identity, see Zevallos, Tres pintores cajamarquinos; Villegas,
“El Instituto de Arte Peruano”; Schreffler and Welton, “Garcilaso de La
Vega”; and Majluf and Wuffarden, Sabogal.
47. Archivo del Instituto de Arte Peruano, folder 11, “Instituto de 50. J. Sabogal, El desván de la imaginería peruana (Lima, 1956).
Arte Peruano, Informe sobre sus actividades” (not dated; probably Mujica Pinilla discusses this text in “Sobre imagineros e imaginarios
1951), fol. 42. andinos,” 26–27.

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282 RES 67/68 2016/2017

sacristies crammed with dusty saints. The sheer quantity

of colonial churches across the Andean landscape leads
him to reflect on the geographical reach and historical
depth of the country’s colonial patrimony: “The Catholic
religious buildings, with foundations of mortar, brick,
stone, volcanic rock, or simply adobe, with vaults,
cupolas, towers, and bell towers, constructed at every
corner of this territory, in use or abandoned, are [what
we consider] ancient within our short modern life. And
those that appear alone, perched on the ruins of the
dead pueblo in the silence of the grand Andean
landscape and on the plains of the plateau, give us a
sense of their respectable old age.51” This image of
isolated churches set against expansive, desolate
mountain landscapes finds visual parallel in numerous
paintings by Blas and Sabogal. The study of colonial
churches remained at the forefront of the IAP’s
objectives, as stated in the organization’s founding
documents and evidenced by continued references to Figure 4. José Sabogal, Plazuela de San Sebastián,
Huancavelica, 1932. Oil on canvas, 60 x 69 cm. Private
research trips undertaken by its members to photograph
collection. Photo: Daniel Giannoni. Courtesy of ARCHI:
and examine the architecture of the highland and
Archivo Digital de Arte Peruano, Museo de Arte de Lima.
coastal regions. A painting like Sabogal’s depiction of a Color version available as an online enhancement.
church in Huancavelica can thus be considered as both
an artistic expression and a form of salvage work to consider including colonial art in their pinacoteca,
intended to preserve a historical patrimony then making the case that colonial art showcased the
perceived to be on the brink of extinction (fig. 4). “gestational” period of popular art, which had come to
Sabogal’s architectural description above also suggests define the region by the twentieth century.53 These
that these landscape paintings bear a self-referential visions even extended beyond Peru; in 1947, Sabogal
quality in their oblique nod to local histories of artistic had proposed an exhibition to Luis Fabio Xammar, the
production. If rural churches were the forgotten colonial director of education in Peru, which was to be modeled
museums of Peru, then producing these paintings was a on the wildly popular Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art
way to document the rootedness of colonial art in the exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New
country’s landscape. The exaltation of the Andean York in 1940. In his proposal, Sabogal suggested a
landscape was a common leitmotif in indigenista similarly titled exhibition, Mil Años de Arte Peruano
painting, reflecting the geographical determinism at the (One thousand years of Peruvian art), which would be
heart of the conceptualization of the nation espoused by held in Buenos Aires and showcase artworks according
many of these artists.52 The closed church door in to four categories: pre-Columbian, Mediterranean
Sabogal’s painting might beckon the viewer to imagine (colonial), popular, and modern.54 The exhibition space
the mysterious contents he describes in El desván— would thus have reaffirmed the notion of popular art as
objects that had the potential to unleash a cohesive and a natural descendant of colonial visual traditions. The
vibrant history of art that remained to be fully colonial section of Sabogal’s exhibition plan was by far
constructed. The painting, then, stands at the endpoint of the most extensive, incorporating textiles, religious
a Peruvian history of art on the verge of self-definition, sculptures from the Quito School, silverwork, alabaster
the genesis of which is exemplified by the colonial sculptures, paintings by the Cuzco and Quito Schools,
church being represented. and mannequins dressed in authentic clothing of the
Sabogal exported his vision of colonial art beyond the
confines of Lima and Cuzco. In a 1951 letter to the
Municipio de Huancayo in central Peru, he urged them 53. Archivo del Instituto de Arte Peruano, folder 11, “Carta sobre
el plan de organizar una Pinacoteca Municipal en Huancayo (1951),”
fols. 87–88.
51. Sabogal, El desván de la imaginería peruana, 18. 54. Archivo del Instituto de Arte Peruano, folder 11, “Plan para
52. See Greet, Beyond National Identity. una muestra de Arte Peruano en Buenos Aires (1947),” fols. 51–57.

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 283

colonial period. In addition, he proposed including to colonial objects, in some cases by the photographers
photographs of Peru’s colonial patrimony that could not themselves.59 For instance, Pablo Veramendi, a
be transported for exhibition, including architecture, professional photographer and art conservator who
mural paintings, pulpits, monstrances, and chalices.55 hailed from Lima, documented colonial artworks during
Buenos Aires would have been a natural fit given the his stay in Cuzco in 1930. He would also return to the
rich history of intellectual exchange between Peru and city in the wake of the 1950 earthquake to participate in
Argentina with regard to the visual arts, and in particular the restoration of a number of churches that suffered
between Cuzco and the Argentine capital.56 Moreover, damage.60
Sabogal’s six-year stay in Buenos Aires from 1912 to Among the artworks Veramendi documented in 1930
1918 for his artistic training at the Escuela Nacional de is a monumental colonial painting depicting a bird’s-eye
Bellas Artes may have also inspired him to pursue it as a view of Cuzco in the wake of the city’s colossal seismic
potential venue for the show.57 The exhibition evidently disaster of 1650 (fig. 5).61 In Veramendi’s photograph,
never materialized; Xammar tragically died in an the painting appears to be outside the doors of the
airplane crash in March of that same year, and it does church of El Triunfo (next to Cuzco Cathedral), where it
not appear that anyone else followed up on Sabogal’s still hangs. The painting is flanked by two men who
proposal.58 Nevertheless, these efforts deserve Veramendi likely included to provide a sense of the
consideration in the historiography of colonial art as canvas’s scale. Their movement at the moment
indications of a growing desire to construct a codified Veramendi clicked on the shutter caused them to appear
narrative of Andean art history that could be reproduced as phantom blurs, lending the photograph an almost
in a variety of venues, both local and international. ethereal quality. While the two men remain out of focus,
the photographer took great care to capture the details of
the composition, providing us with a surprisingly crisp
Alternative periodizations of colonial Andean art
image of it. The painting is perfectly parallel to the angle
In Cuzco, a constellation of events led to an of the camera, an effect that would have been difficult to
increased interest in colonial art and architecture from achieve if photographed in situ, as it normally hangs
the region during the 1920s and 1930s. The medium of several feet off the ground. These details, coupled with the
photography provided an unparalleled mechanism for fact that Veramendi had the painting brought outside for
the documentation of colonial monuments and works of optimal light exposure, suggest that his photograph was
art. The region’s most prolific photographers, including intended to serve as a form of documentation, not merely
Martín Chambi, Pablo Veramendi, César Meza, and the as a vignette in which the painting happens to appear.
Cabrera brothers focused primarily on portraits of We can also see a visual dialogue at play between
various members of Cuzqueño society, but a lesser- Veramendi’s photograph and the colonial painting it
studied aspect of their work is their photographic captures. The painting provides an expansive aerial view
documentation of numerous colonial monuments and of Cuzco, transporting the viewer to a privileged vantage
artworks. Legions of photographs dating from the 1920s point that simultaneously facilitates a gaze at the entire
to 1940s reveal damages and subsequent repairs made city center, the patron Don Alonso Cortés de Monroy in
the foreground, and Heaven above. Yet Veramendi
chose to include a substantial portion of the ground
55. Ibid., fols. 54–56.
upon which he, the painting, and the two men stand. By
56. Kuon Arce et al., Cuzco–Buenos Aires; C. G. García, choosing to frame his composition beyond the borders
“Perspectivas sobre arte colonial sudamericano: Las publicaciones del
Instituto de Arte Americano (Buenos Aires, 1947–1962),” Temas
Americanistas 34 (2015): 25–45.
57. Majluf and Wuffarden, Sabogal, 10–18. 59. One of the most comprehensive repositories of early twentieth-
58. I was unable to locate any further evidence of the exhibition in century Cuzco photography is in the Fototeca Andina of the Centro
the Archivo del Instituto de Arte Peruano, online library catalogs, or Bartolomé de las Casas.
specialized libraries (including the library of the Instituto de Arte 60. J. Coronado, “Toward Agency: Photography and Everyday
Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas “Mario J. Buschiazzo” in Buenos Subjects in Cuzco, 1900–1940,” Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 3
Aires and the Biblioteca Guido Delran Cousy of the Centro Bartolomé (2009): 119–35.
de las Casas in Cuzco). I also searched seven of Argentina’s major 61. See R. L. Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World: 1493–
newspapers during the 1940s (Crítica, Libre Pensador, Nación, 1793 (New Haven, CT, 2000), 178–80; and M. Schreffler, “To Live in
La Prensa, Razón, Standard, and Vanguardia) and found no This City Is to Die: Death and Architecture in Colonial Cuzco, Peru,”
exhibition reviews. Hispanic Issues On Line 7 (2010): 63–65.

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284 RES 67/68 2016/2017

Figure 5. Pablo Veramendi, Cuadro del terremoto de 1650, 1930. Fototeca Andina, Centro Bartolomé de las Casas, #VER00052.
Photo: Courtesy of the Centro Bartolomé de las Casas.

of the canvas, he locates the painting within appearances.”62 Veramendi’s photograph makes manifest
contemporary Cuzqueño physical and social space. The the literal temporal demarcations between 1650 and
viewer thus bears witness to the literal place of colonial 1930 through his staging of the painting and the
art within a contemporary milieu. The photograph materiality of the photographic object itself.63 Such
provides a mediation on the history of Peruvian artistic photographs involved a reckoning with the colonial past
practice; just as the canvas “frames” a particular vision that acknowledged the historical depths of local artistic
of the city in the mid-seventeenth century, Veramendi’s practice, thereby enabling twentieth-century artists to
photograph transforms the painting back into a historical
object, presenting it to the viewer through the relatively
novel artistic medium of his own time. As Frederick 62. F. N. Bohrer, “Photographic Perspectives: Photography and the
Bohrer observes with respect to photographs of artworks, Institutional Formation of Art History,” in Art History and Its
“photographs do not ever only present us with second- Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, ed. E. Mansfield (London,
order artworks, but also with what must be 2002), 252.
63. See Fototeca Andina: Fotografía y cultura en el Cuzco del
acknowledged as works of photographic art. The siglo XX, ed. N. Velardi and M. A. Sadurní Roig (Cuzco, 2011); and
camera’s work is not only subtractive, but also additive. S. Spitta, “On the Monumental Silence of the Archive,” Emisférica 9,
It never only captures, but also constructs nos. 1–2 (2012): n.p.

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 285

inscribe themselves into a distinctively Peruvian, or in at its best—as he describes it, the indigenous “yeast” to
this case, Cuzqueño history of art. Spanish bread that endowed it with an “original
The date of Veramendi’s photograph coincides with a flavor.”68 He also begrudgingly acknowledged the value
growing concern within local intellectual circles for the of paintings that he saw as lacking in stylistic finesse but
preservation of Cuzco’s colonial patrimony, an initiative having valuable references to Cuzco’s history. He thus
whose seeds originated in the 1920s and which would describes the painting of Cuzco after the 1650
grow exponentially in the wake of the 1950 earthquake. earthquake photographed by Veramendi as “grotesque
For instance, in 1928 Julio Gutiérrez published an article in its coloration, primitive in its conception, false in its
entitled “Una restauración bárbara,” in which he perspective . . . this canvas nevertheless is attractive for
lamented the deplorable work undertaken by a the original things [that it depicts] (tiene sin embargo el
misguided sculptor in the restoration of a colonial atractivo de las cosas originales).”69
painting by Lázaro Pardo de Lago at the church of We can thus begin to stitch together a broader
San Cristóbal. The painting suffered such tremendous context for Veramendi’s photograph, Gutiérrez’s lament,
alteration that, per Gutiérrez, “the historian of Cusqueño and Cossío del Pomar’s publications during the 1920s
art has lost a precious specimen, worthy of study.”64 His and 1930s. This increased recognition of the value of
statement speaks to a contemporary anxiety regarding colonial art dovetails with contemporaneous initiatives
the deleterious impact of faulty restorations on the dedicated to the valorization of Cuzco’s cultural
historical and aesthetic integrity of artworks. Gutiérrez patrimony at large. In 1937, José Uriel García founded
remained committed to promoting knowledge about the and was first president of the Instituto Americano de Arte
arts, serving as founding member of Kuntur, the journal del Cuzco (hereafter IAAC), dedicated to the promotion
in which his article appeared, and winning the praise of of popular and folkloric arts in the highland city and its
José Carlos Mariátegui himself. He went on to pursue a environs. While scholars have produced a number of
highly successful career as an illustrator, journalist, art studies on the work of the IAAC in showcasing
critic, and activist, epitomizing the multifaceted lives of contemporary indigenous folklore, less consideration has
the first aficionados of colonial Andean art.65 been given to their fervent interest in colonial art and
Gutiérrez’s article came on the heels of the first architecture.70 The institution remained committed to the
scholarly monograph on colonial painting in Cuzco: preservation and study of colonial art from its very
Felipe Cossío del Pomar’s doctoral thesis, Historia crítica inception. At an IAAC meeting in 1938, member Víctor
de la pintura en el Cuzco, published by the Universidad Guillén called for the “conservation of the treasures and
de Cuzco in 1922.66 A revised edition, entitled Pintura artistic gems contained within the churches and
colonial (escuela cuzqueña), was published in 1928 and convents of Cuzco and its provinces . . . inventorying the
circulated internationally.67 These texts were objects with the consent of the ecclesiastical
instrumental in the early canonization of colonial authorities.”71 It is unclear if this initiative to produce an
paintings from the Cuzco region. He reserved special inventory of Cuzco’s colonial religious artworks
praise for works of art that he deemed to combine a materialized.72 Nevertheless, it is evident that the task of
superior aesthetic quality with historical or documentary documenting, preserving, and disseminating knowledge
value. In Cossío’s view, this was Cuzco School painting about the city’s colonial artistic patrimony was well
underway by the 1930s. The IAAC viewed Cuzco’s
64. Gutiérrez, “Una restauración bárbara,” 34.
diverse artistic expressions of past and present as a
65. J. G. Gutiérrez Loayza, Sesenta años de arte en el Qosqo continuum that reflected a shared spirit of cuzqueñidad.
(1927–1988): Ensayos, artículos y comentarios (Cuzco, 1994), 9–11. The IAAC’s embrace of colonial art was heavily
66. F. Cossío del Pomar, Historia crítica de la pintura en el Cuzco informed by García’s position that Cuzqueño art of the
(Cuzco, 1922). Parts of the thesis also appeared verbatim in Cuzco’s
Revista Universitaria a year later; Cossío del Pomar, “La pintura en el
Cuzco.” Because the writings of Blas, Sabogal, García, and others did 68. Cossío del Pomar, Historia crítica, 161–62.
not utilize standard citational practices, it is difficult to prove that they 69. Ibid., 98.
read Cossío del Pomar’s work, but it is highly likely given its wide 70. In particular, see de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; and
circulation and critical importance. Mendoza, Creating Our Own.
67. F. Cossío del Pomar, Pintura colonial (escuela cuzqueña) 71. Archivo del Instituto Americano de Arte, Sección Peruana,
(Cuzco, 1928). That same year, the book was distributed in Paris by Comité del Cuzco, Libro de Actas, 1938, fols. 41–42.
the publisher Cété. An English translation followed in 1964: Peruvian 72. Unfortunately, much of the original archives of the Instituto
Colonial Art: The Cuzco School of Painting, trans. G. Arbaiza (New Americano de Arte were destroyed by flooding in the office in which
York, 1965). they were located.

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286 RES 67/68 2016/2017

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not defined about an Andean artistic spirit than those that
exclusively by colonial rupture, but signaled a new “reproduce copies of the most famous Renaissance
moment in the evolution of indigenous identity. His painters.”76 In essence, he seeks an oppositional, original
references to the colonial period as a ciclo neoindio art born in the context of Spanish colonial domination as
(New Indian cycle) and colonial art as arte neoindiano evidence for a resolutely American history of art that
may indicate that he viewed colonialism not as a fixed would persist and flourish in the centuries to come.77 It
moment in time but as a persistent condition within is perhaps for this very reason that García terms the art
which Peruvians continued to find themselves even with of the colonial era “New Indian” art, signifying a
the advent of modernity. These terms also suggest a generative shift from pre-Hispanic practices yet retaining
process of becoming—an epoch not yet concluded.73 a cultural and spiritual continuity with that past.
García thus released colonial art from European Art history played a vital role in constructing a
periodizations and grounded it in a history of art rooted legitimizing framework for contemporary aesthetic
in Andean soil. In El nuevo indio, he writes on the expression. An especially illustrative example is Cusco
resistance of colonial architecture to European aesthetic histórico, a book coauthored by Rafael Larco Herrera,
conventions: “those monuments escape the canons of Luis E. Valcárcel, and Carlos Ríos Pagaza, published in
classical technique, such as unity, variety, and harmony, Lima in 1934.78 The final 169 pages of the book present
in the same way as Wölfflin’s analysis of aesthetics. an album of black-and-white photographs documenting
There is neither unity, nor variety, nor harmony, in the a variety of archaeological sites, artifacts, and works of
Western sense, in [colonial buildings] because the art, making it one of the most extensive photographic
classicizing technique has been resoundingly repositories of Andean art of its time. Toward the end of
expunged.”74 García consciously frames Andean art’s the album, we see three paintings juxtaposed on two
distance from the classical tradition not as a detriment or facing pages (fig. 6).79 The image occupying the left-
failure but as evidence of agency on the part of local hand page is an eighteenth-century portrait of a ñusta, or
builders and artists. Drawing on the pioneering studies Inca princess. The next page reproduces two paintings
of Martín Noel and Ángel Guido, García carves out a by José Sabogal, Gamonal and Plaza Mayor. The book’s
space for a new narrative that does not try to place subsequent pages feature several more indigenista
colonial Andean architecture into a European stylistic paintings from the 1920s and 1930s. No indication is
matrix. This becomes even clearer in his description of made whatsoever of the nearly two-hundred-year gulf
what he terms indiátides, or Indiatids—indigenous separating the colonial portrait and Sabogal’s paintings;
columns akin to caryatids that feature carvings of local in fact, the caption for the ñusta painting offers no date
flora and fauna, found frequently in the architecture of at all. The erasure of the historical interim reinforces a
southern Peru and Bolivia: “Once again the Andes narrative of indigenista art as the direct descendant of
represents an eminent collaborator in the culture that Inca-themed paintings of the late colonial period.80
began with the conquest, elements that style the Lest this juxtaposition of images in Cusco histórico
neoindian column in a singular and picturesque way seem merely incidental, consider an article published by
and which give the American Baroque this brilliance José Uriel García just two years prior in Buenos Aires’s
that is incomparable and unclassifiable in any of the
canons of universalist aesthetics.”75 García deliberately
76. Ibid., 135.
championed works that would be considered “second 77. Contemporaneous scholarship in Mexico also emphasized the
rate” or “derivative” according to the Western canon visibly indigenous elements of colonial art, particularly that produced
because they signified to him a confident defiance of after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. It is highly likely that García
European models. He notes, for instance, that colonial would have had access to art historical writing from Mexico, although
paintings of Christ, with their “deformed lines” and he does not directly cite these works in his text.
78. R. Larco Herrera, L. E. Valcárcel, and C. Ríos Pagaza, Cusco
“vibrant intensity of primary colors” reveal far more histórico: Homenaje a la ciudad de todos los tiempos en la cuarta
centuria de su fundación española (Lima, 1934).
73. “Pero la ‘Colonia’ no nos dá todavía al tipo completo del 79. Ibid., 318–19.
nuevo indio. Este será un fruto del porvenir cuando lo incaico y lo 80. See, e.g., G. Denaler de la Tour, “El Perú histórico y
colonial, que para mal nuestro le pesan en el alma, sean arqueológico: Conferencia inédita pronunciada en la Sociedad
completamente modificados al tono de la cultura moderna.” García, Científica Argentina el 3 de Julio de 1942,” Revista del Instituto
“El nuevo indio,” 19–20. Americano de Arte 1, no. 1 (1942): 61–71, and “Croquis crítico de la
74. García, El nuevo indio, 2nd ed., 126. arquitectura cuzqueña hasta nuestros días diseñado para un futuro
75. Ibid., 128. estudio estructural y estético,” El Comercio, April 12, 1954.

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 287

Figure 6. Rafael Larco Herrera, Luis E. Valcárcel, and Carlos Ríos Pagaza, Cusco histórico: Homenaje a la
ciudad de todos los tiempos en la cuarta centuria de su fundación española (Lima, 1934), 318–19. Work in
the public domain. Color version available as an online enhancement.

newspaper, La Prensa. Entitled “La india y la chola,” the woman’s pose, gaze, and centrality within the
article juxtaposes the very same colonial painting of the composition, Chambi’s portrait offers a counterdiscourse
ñusta with Martín Chambi’s photograph of an to the degrading photographic compositions
indigenous woman from Combapata (fig. 7).81 García masquerading as scientific inquiry to which scores of
scarcely references the accompanying images in the text. indigenous, black, and mixed-race Andeans were
But the images provide an additional layer of discourse subjected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
at the visual level that parallels the layout found in centuries.82 Instead, she stands confidently, as if in
Cusco histórico. The images were arranged to give the control of her own representation. Jorge Coronado’s
impression that the women, who are in three-quarter reading of another photograph by Chambi is particularly
pose, are slightly turned toward one another; they even apt here: he argues that these portraits should be
seem to extend their arms toward each other. Both stand understood “not as objects to be pitied or symbols to
confidently with their gaze directed at the viewer, and be overcome, but rather as historical subjects that resist
both wear voluminous skirts and llicllas (shawls) over and demand a space in modernity.”83 Like colonial
their shoulders that are fastened by tupus (garment pins). artists appropriating the conventions of early modern
The strategic placement of the images within the portraiture to depict members of Cuzco’s indigenous
newspaper spread captures the nature of the dialogue elite, Chambi utilized an imported artistic medium
that García and his contemporaries sought to initiate
between colonial and contemporary art. Through the
82. See Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity.
81. J. U. García, “La india y la chola,” La Prensa, May 8, 1932. 83. Coronado, The Andes Imagined, 161.

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288 RES 67/68 2016/2017

Figure 7. José Uriel García, “La india y la chola,” La Prensa, May 8, 1932. Archivo Fotográfico Martín
Chambi, clipping file. Photo: Author. Color version available as an online enhancement.

associated with modernity in order to represent expressly colonial forbears may seem retrograde or inherently
local subjects, sites, and landscapes.84 The visual antimodern. I suspect, however, that this impetus
juxtapositions in Cusco histórico and La Prensa lend derived from something much deeper. First, it suggests
visual credence to García’s idea that colonial art could that these artists and intellectuals located the ground
provide a template of intercultural negotiation for zero of South American modernity firmly in the sixteenth
contemporary artists. Like their seventeenth- and century with the rupture produced by the Spanish
eighteenth-century predecessors who negotiated conquest, a point echoed by several artists during the
between Inca and Hispanic visual systems, modern 1930s and 1940s, including Sabogal himself.85 During a
artists were faced with the task of creating visual recorded segment on Radio Nacional in Lima in 1943,
harmony out of two disparate cultures—lo cuzqueño or Sabogal talked about his experiences during a trip to the
lo andino, brought to fruition through three hundred United States: “Our modern art didn’t begin yesterday
years of transculturation and a burgeoning imported with the individual work of four Peruvian painters of the
modernity. nineteenth century involved in the Parisian and Roman
The self-conscious construction of a historical workshops. It is my understanding that our modern art
parallelism between contemporary artists and their began with the era initiated by the events of Cajamarca
in 1533. Our works of architecture, sculpture, painting,
and secular and religious luxuries are varied and rich,
84. On colonial portraiture of indigenous elites, see T. Cummins, and make up a very interesting part of the process of our
“We Are the Other: Peruvian Portraits of Colonial Kurakakuna,” in
Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the
Sixteenth Century, ed. K. J. Andrien and R. Adorno (Berkeley, CA, 85. The research on invocations of modernity among Latin
1991), 203–70; and C. Dean, “Inka Nobles: Portraiture and Paradox American artists of the twentieth century is vast. See P. Frank, ed.,
in Colonial Peru,” in Exploring New World Imagery: Spanish Colonial Readings in Latin American Modern Art (New Haven, CT, 2004); and
Papers from the 2002 Mayer Center Symposium, ed. D. Pierce H. Olea and M. Kervandjian, eds., Resisting Categories: Latin American
(Denver, 2005), 80–103. and/or Latino? (Houston, 2012).

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 Cohen-Aponte: Forging a popular art history 289

national formation.”86 He went on to argue that Latin

American artists inherited a centuries-old tradition that
contributed to the richness of their visual expression,
whereas North American artists were still in the early
stages of fomenting a national artistic identity.87 In
essence, Sabogal was calling for a specifically Peruvian
modernity, one that was born on Andean soil and
retained historical and cultural continuity from the
colonial period to the twentieth century. By tracing
artistic modernity to the colonial era, Sabogal and his
colleagues recognized viceregal art as an active
response to the imposition of European iconography and
religion rather than a passive copy of continental
models. The indigenistas and neoindianistas, in spite of
the problems with their particular brand of discourse,
anticipated some of the major debates concerning
originality, authenticity, agency, and subversion in the
arts of colonial Peru that would ensue several decades
later, and which remain ongoing in the twenty-first
century.
Second, the various methods of documenting colonial
art—writing about it, photographing it, displaying it in
museums and galleries, and incorporating aspects of it in
contemporary painting—were profound acts of self-
determination. These artists and scholars created
historical trajectories where none had existed. They
wrote, painted, and photographed themselves into a
nascent Peruvian art history and thereby constructed a
narrative of artmaking and resistance that simultaneously
valorized colonial art and situated contemporary popular
and indigenista artists into a history that had yet to be
written. The fragmentary nature of these intellectual
contributions has prevented a full appreciation of the
early work undertaken in the study of colonial Andean
art, but when considered together, we can see the
tremendous efforts that went into this coordinated
“rediscovery” of Peru’s art historical past during the first
half of the twentieth century.

86. J. Sabogal, “Impresiones de mi visita a Estados Unidos de

Norteamérica,” in Obras literarias completas, 429. Originally
transmitted on Radio Nacional, Lima, March 21, 1943.
87. Greet, Beyond National Identity, 9.

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