Sérvulo Gutiérrez Alarcón (1914 – 21 July 1961) was a
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
vian artist, described by ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' as "Peru’s most celebrated painter".
"Doris Gibson: founder of Peruvian news magazine, Caretas"
''The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'', 30 September 2008. Retrieved 20 September 2009. He was initially untaught and self-educated, but then trained under the artist Emilio Pettoruti. Gutiérrez had a relationship with Doris Gibson.
Life
Sérvulo Gutiérrez was born in Ica. He had little in the way of normal education and initially trained in Lima to be a boxer. He moved to Buenos Aires, where he focused on pottery of the Pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...
period, establishing premises to both conserve such items as well as to manufacture new ones in the tradition of that style.[Mackay, W. Iain. "Gutiérrez Alarcón, Sérvulo",]
Oxford art online
(subscription). Retrieved 20 September 2009.
Gutiérrez was self-taught until he had the opportunity to study in
Buenos Aires for eight years with the major Argentine painter, Emilio Pettoruti (1892–1971).[Bethell, Leslie (1998). ''A cultural history of Latin America: literature, music, and the visual arts in the 19th and 20th centuries'', p.426, Cambridge University Press. , . Accessed vi]
Google Books
20 September 2009. He travelled to Paris in 1938, where the study of work by French artists broadened his approach away from an academic direction towards a delineated and sculptural Expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
style, which he pursued after his return to Peru in 1942.[ Gutiérrez' masterpiece is a depiction of a powerful and crude nude woman, ''The Andes'' (1943), representing "the unavoidable South American reality."][ He was not an intellectual and this may explain how the tenor of his work is that of a "direct, living testimony."][
His interest in sculpture was stimulated by his apprenticeship under Pettoruti, and although he did not produce many works of this kind, his sculpture ''Amazonia'' won first prize in a competition in 1942.][
The influence of other European avant-garde styles did not affect him, and for some time he incorporated the influence of the Peruvian ]Indigenist
Indigenism can refer to several different ideologies that seek to promote the interests of indigenous peoples. The term is used differently by various scholars and activists, and can be used purely descriptively or carry political connotations. Th ...
manner in his work.[ Subsequently, his Expressionist tendencies intensified with techniques such as scoring the paint surface to create textural effects and heightening his colours with gestural marks of black, red, blue and green paint, leading at the beginning of the 1950s to such works such as ''Don Juan'' (1952).][ This direction intensified with a violent ]Fauvist
Fauvism ( ) is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of (, ''the wild beasts''), a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong col ...
manner into mystical subjects, including ''St Rosa de Lima'' (c. 1960–61).[
Gutiérrez had a relationship with Doris Gibson, who was a muse to him as well as a lover.][Collyns, Dan]
"Peru's first 'visionary' editor"
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
, 30 August 2008. Retrieved 20 September 2009. After an argument between them, he sold a full-size nude painting, which he had done of her, to a well-off businessman.[ Gibson arrived at the businessman's house with a photographer and, on the pretext of needing daylight for a photograph, took the painting outside and promptly drove away with it.][ When he later asked for its return, she responded, "I don't want to be nude in your house."][
He died in Lima on 21 July 1961.
]
See also
* Peruvian arts
* List of Peruvian artists
* Latin American art
Latin American art is the combined artistic expression of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, as well as Latin Americans living in other regions.
The art has roots in the many different Indigenous peoples of the Americas, i ...
References
External links
Centro Cultural Sérvulo Gutiérrez
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gutierrez Alarcon Servulo
1914 births
1961 deaths
20th-century Peruvian painters
20th-century Peruvian male artists
Peruvian male painters