José Sabogal (Lima 1888-1956)

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José Sabogal (1888-1956), was one of the few commercially successful artists in the first half of the 20th century in Peru and was one of the creators and masters of the Indigenismo movement. This movement denounced and criticized inequalities in society and the \”Indian problem\” (SCIORRA, 2013).

\”The common image of the Andean Indian was that of a melancholic, stoic, lazy, treacherous, suffering race, etc., an \”ancient and mysterious race\”; the question was whether agrarian reform and education could alter the \”racial character\” and \”modernize\” the Indian and, therefore, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico \”(Whitaker and Jordan (1966) in SMITH 1990)

He sought to create a rural world in his art and was attracted to the Peruvian people, which the indigenistas believed to represent a fusion of pre-Columbian and colonial elements.

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 El Alcalde Indio de Chincheros: Varayoc (1925) 

His piece, Varayoc, The Indian Mayor of Chinceros, (1925) is a major representative of the Indigenismo movement and the emphasis is on ethnic pride and connection with the pre-Spanish rulers of Peru. 

\”His red hat and cape and his exaggerated baton in black and silver, are opposed, however, to a real village and an Andean landscape, symbolizing the continuity of the Indians of today with their ancestors, the once Inca rulers.\” (SMITH, 1990) 

Known as the \”Painter of the Ugly\” (for his crude style, sometimes caricatural), Sabogal uses bright colors, and a fluid brushwork, to give his landscapes and natives a sense of presence and power. 

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India del Collao (1925) 

Here we see a representation of an indigenous woman from the Cullao region in Peru and we can understand that perhaps the sadness on her face is a sign of a society in which she was not as important as the man. 

\”Sabogal, he discovered, the first among many, a certain air of beauty in the very ancestry of the Andean man, the essential value of the Andean man, and rural custom, was for his artist\’s eyes, beauty itself and the metaphysical depth of the Peruvian landscape, the master of his work. \”(El Labrador, May 2000). 

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Plaza de Huanta

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Vista de Amancaes

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Arquitecto Quechua 

Sabogal was also the socialist party magazine illustrator. The publication was called Amauta (the wise man, the master) and in its pages there were Andean motifs such as the head of the first edition of Índio. In this publication, the artist seeks a sense of a Peruvian national art. (SCIORRA, 2013). One of the founders of the Peruvian Socialist Party was José Carlos Mariátegul, who also supported the Indigenismo movement and wrote “José Sabugal, El Primer Pintor Peruano” (1956): 

[…] The importance of José Sabogal not only lies in having been a great painter, and having promoted the revaluation of the Peruvian cultural and artistic tradition, in general, through his paintings, he was also a great scholar of Peruvian vernacular art, and sought to spread it, taking it out in the light of public opinion, rescuing it from oblivion but, above all marginalization […] 

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José Sabogal, a retrospective at MALI ( Art Museum of Lima): 

\”It is not only dedicated to seek or to exalt the aesthetic or cultural values ​​referring to the indigenous people, but to everything that shows to be part of the Peruvian tradition. That is to say everything that defines the \’Peruvian\’ as such \”(De Orellana Sánchez, 2004). 

REFERENCES 

WHITAKER, Arthur P./ JORDAN, David C. (1966): Nationalism in Contemporary Latin America. New York, The Free Press. 

SCIORRA, Jorgelina. (2013): José Sabogal y la identidad de la revista Amauta. Revista Arte y Investigación #9, Universidad Nacional de La Plata 

DE ORELLANA SÁNCHEZ, J. C. (2004): “José Sabogal Wiesse. ¿Pintor Indigenista?”. Consensus, 8 (9). Perú: UNIFE. 

SMITH, Anthony D. (1990): Nacionalismo e indigenismo: la búsqueda de un pasado auténtico.  Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinarios  de América y el Caribe. Volumen 1, #2