Gustavo Camino Brent 2

 

Gustavo Camino Brent 2

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This painter became the pioneer of Peruvian indigenism

From his early years in Lima, Gustavo Camino Brent showed a remarkable talent that he would later express in a unique style within the Peruvian indigenist movement. (Enrique Camino Brent Collection – “Luis Jaime Cisneros” Center of the PUCP)

The world of the arts in Peru It has countless exponents in all branches, all with a talent that has left its mark on their specialty.

 

That is the case of Gustavo Camino Brentwho since childhood excelled in various disciplines, but stood out in painting. So much so that he became the first representative of what was called Peruvian indigenism. And this is his story.

 

The renowned painter made a significant contribution to Peruvian art by authentically depicting Andean cultures and landscapes in his works. (Indio del Collado – Oil on canvas – Enrique Camino Brent, 1939 – BCRP Museum)

Gustavo Enrique Camino Brenthis full name, was an influential Peruvian painter of the indigenist movement and was born in Lima on June 22, 1909. Son of Juan Francisco Camino Anderson and María Águeda Catalina Brent Delgado, he grew up in an environment that valued culture and the arts.

 

From a young age, Gustavo showed remarkable talent. At the age of three, he won a gold medal in a child beauty pageant.

 

She began her education with a private tutor and then attended the Colegio Sagrados Corazones Recoleta, continuing her studies at the Colegio San Agustín and culminating in Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

 

In 1922, he entered the National School of Fine Arts of Lima at just twelve years old. Despite the opposition of his father, Daniel Hernández, the school director, intervened so that Gustavo could continue his artistic studies.

 

Under the tutelage of Hernandez and Jose SabogalGustavo developed a distinctive style, far removed from the predominant European influences.

 

From his studies at the National School of Fine Arts in Lima to his international travels, discover the story of this influential artist. (Balcón de Herodes – Oil on canvas – Enrique Camino Brent, 1937 – Museo del BCRP)

Gustavo also studied architecture at the Lima School of EngineersIn 1932, he graduated with honors from the Fine Arts program and began teaching at the institution in 1937. His first exhibition in Lima in 1936 was praised, and his work began to gain international recognition.

 

But his search for inspiration led him to travel through the interior of Peru, exploring local landscapes and techniques, such as the ceramics of Santiago de Pupuja. In 1938, he married María Rosa Macedo Cánepa, with whom he had a son, Luis Federico Camino Macedo.

 

In other roles, Gustavo taught ceramics at the Jose Pardo Polytechnic and designed the chapel of the institute, which still preserves its original design. His travels through Puno and Buenos Aires inspired series on Collao and Cusco. In 1940, he returned to Lima and aligned himself with Sabogal, who was dismissed from the direction of the ENBA (National School of Fine Arts) in 1943.

 

During his trips to the United States, Mexico and Quito, Gustavo met Oswaldo Guayasamín and made murals, such as the one at the former Ministry of Public Education.

 

This notable artist not only left his mark on painting, but also on architecture and Fine Arts education in different institutions. (Red Staircase – Oil on canvas – Enrique Camino Brent, 1954 – Pinacoteca Ignacio Merino)

He was director of the Huamanga School of Fine Artswhere he also taught. His work, characterized by portraits and landscapes, combined a strong pictorial resonance with earthy colors.

 

One of his outstanding works is the “Christ of Tayankani” from 1951which reflects his fascination with popular religiosity. Despite his membership in the indigenist group, Gustavo maintained a personal line in his art, depicting the architectural landscape and the image of the Indian with an intense palette.

 

The Peruvian painter combined his training in architecture and his indigenous art to create works that resonated in America and Europe. (Christ of Tayankani – Oil on canvas – Enrique Camino Brent, 1937 – MALI)

In 1957, he took over the management of the School of Fine Arts and Crafts from the University of Ayacucho, where he continued until his death.

 

His vision of the vernacular world was reflected in his works, which captured corners and squares with a melancholic beauty. His works can be found in collections in America and Europe, with “El Recuerdo (La Capa)” from 1930 being particularly noteworthy.

 

In 1960, he returned to Lima due to severe headaches. Specialists determined that this was due to a malignant tumor lodged in your brain.

 

He passed away on July 15, 1960during an operation. His body was laid to rest in his workshop and buried in the San Andrés barracks of the El Ángel Cemetery.

With affection,

Ruben

 

Gustavo Camino Brend 1

 

Gustavo Camino Brend 1

Biography

Born on Alfonso Ugarte Avenue, Lima, on June 22, 1909, he was the third son of Juan Francisco Camino Anderson and María Águeda Catalina Brent Delgado.

 

 

 

In 1912, when he was only three years old, he was awarded the gold medal in the child beauty contest of the Italian Society of Charity and Culture.

 

 

 

He began his first studies with a private tutor and in 1914 he entered the Colegio Sagrados Corazones Recoleta, where he remained until 1920, when he was transferred to San Agustín, for two years, to finally finish at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, from 1923 to 1926.

 

 

 

In 1922, demonstrating his vocation for the arts, he was admitted at only twelve years of age to the National School of Fine Arts in Lima, which he was about to leave at the insistence of his father, for which Daniel Hernández himself, director of the School, He requested to remain at the School.

 

 

 

In 1930 he entered the School of Engineers in Lima to begin his studies in architecture, which were followed along with painting. In Fine Arts he was a disciple of Daniel Hernández and then of José Sabogal, from whom he would receive a clear influence, demonstrating in his work a theme different from that of the majority of painters, influenced by the European current.

 

 

 

"(...) he stood out for his special natural conditions for painting, so he was invited by Sabogal to join his select group of students, being the youngest of them"

 

He graduated with the first place in his class, in 1932, the year in which Daniel Hernández also died and José Sabogal became director, ratified in 1933. It is he who appointed him professor in 1937.

He exhibited for the first time in Lima, in May 1936 and later in the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Europe and Morocco, in North Africa.

 

 

 

The Social Magazine, (Year VI, No. 127, Lima June 5, 1936) published Espinoza Saldaña's commentary on the first exhibition of paintings by Camino Brent, inaugurated on May 28 of the same year at the Philharmonic Society, and says:

 

 

 

"He graduated a few years ago from the National School of Fine Arts. There is no doubt that he has a temperament from which much more can be expected... However, we recognize in the canvases in the exhibition that he has personal qualities that are not improvised or acquired. with work (...)"

 

His trips to the interior of the country were more than a propaganda tour, but rather a search for the landscape as a national theme, and his studies in Santiago de Pupuja on the local ceramic technique are also notable:

 

 

 

"a report written and illustrated with watercolor about the famous bull and its representation in popular crafts"

 

In 1938, he married María Rosa Macedo Cánepa in San Isidro, with whom he had a son, Luis Federico Camino Macedo.

In 1940 Lima returned, and assumed a partisan position with Sabogal, who was removed from the direction of the ENBA in 1943, due to an incident with the Ministry of Instruction. He later traveled to the United States, Mexico and Quito, where he had a meeting with Guayasamín. These trips influenced him to create some murals such as the one preserved in the Former Public Ministry of Education.

 

 

 

He was director of the Huamanga School of Fine Arts, and where he also previously worked as a teacher. The persistence of the portrait, as a means of bourgeois status, is also observed in the work of Camino Brent, his first sketches are portraits, which intersect perfect combinations of a strong pictorial resonance.

 

 

 

A masterpiece is the "Christ of Tayankani" from 1951:

 

 

 

 

"It reveals his fascination with the forms of popular religiosity of the rural world. The praying peasant women who appear in the foreground seem to disappear under the imperious presence of Christ."

 

Despite belonging to the group of Indigenistas, Camino Brent knew how to give his work a personal line, framed by the architectural landscape, without needing to be realistic or identify his paintings with the rural countryside and also by the representation of the image of the Indian. delimited only by the use of a strong palette and in her work matured by earthy colors.

 

 

 

In his artistic creations, as well as in his teaching work, he joined the so-called "indigenist group." When separating from school in a gesture of solidarity with José Sabogal

He took his concerns towards capturing the landscapes and human types of the various regions of the country, and applied to their treatment a personal lyricism characterized by its depth and the suggestive fluidity of its rhythms.

 

 

 

Ultimately, he accepted the direction of the School of Fine Arts and Crafts of the University of Ayacucho (1957) and held it until his death. He had a peculiar vision of the vernacular world and for this he was not content with the realistic and direct transcription, but rather he immersed himself in phantasmagorias imagined by his will to singularize. His predilection was for the corners of Puebla, the cornered patios, the sleepy alleys, the haunted squares and the council chambers. What aroused his enthusiasm is the elegiac, the melancholic decadence of beings and things" (T. Núñez Ureta). His works are preserved in public and private collections in America and Europe. Among them is "The Memory (La Capa )" (1930), oil on canvas measuring 110 × 106 cm, today belonging to the collector José Luis Montoya, celebrated for its expressive beauty and which serves as the cover of the work "Bullfighting Themes" by the historian Aurelio Miró Quesada Sosa.

Family relatives

Sir Dudley Digges, distant ancest

or of Brent Road.

 

Camino Brent was born into an Anglo-Hispanic family of the Lima oligarchy with important Swedish, Scottish and Italian ancestors.

 

 

 

His father was the grandson of the Swedish captain Carlos Gustavo Anderson, who served during the War of Independence under the command of Lord Cochrane and San Martín.

 

 

 

His mother was the daughter of American ambassador Henry May Brent, a member of a prominent family linked to American Independence. Descended from several landowning families in the colony, her ancestors included Colonels Henry Darnall and William Digges and she was linked to Robert Brent (first mayor of Washington D.C.), John Carroll (founder of Georgetown University), Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Daniel Carroll and John Quincy Adams, the latter three Founding Fathers. She was also a descendant of the Englishmen Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Thomas Digges and Warham St Leger.

 

 

 

At the beginning of 1960 he had to return to Lima due to severe head pain. After being examined, a malignant tumor was discovered in the frontal region of the brain. He died in Lima on July 15, 1960 from a brain hemorrhage during an operation. His body was laid to rest in his workshop and he was buried in the San Andrés barracks of the El Ángel Cemetery.

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

 

Interview to Juan Gonzalo Rose

 

Juan Gonzalo Rose to Hildebrandt: Haya told me “you were an Aprista” and  I replied “and you too”

César Hildebrandt interviewed the poet Juan Gonzalo Rose three years before his death, when he had already entered into a twilight attitude, without money, affected by different ailments and completely separated from the world. However, he allowed himself to go back and talk about his life and his poetry.

 

 

 

The interview was published by Caretas magazine, in its edition

 

of March 10, 1980.

Source: Newspaper La Cronica Viva, Lima Peru

You have said, heartbreakingly, that the creative forces have abandoned you, but that you still hope for a miracle.

 

–It is a way of expressing hope, dictated above all by feeling. Because, rationally, I realize that my possibilities of creation are exhausted.

–I have asked myself many times, Juan Gonzalo, what it was that broke him. In a poem from Las comarcas you say: "But the great heartbreak brings only dark nights..." Was that? Was it loneliness?

 

 

 

–Yes, in part… But there are other factors. First of all, of course, time: I am 52 years old. Then, that loneliness that we have referred to and that in my case is very special... Because for four years I have been suffering from depression. This depression leads me to lock myself in my room, and weeks and weeks go by and I don't talk to anyone. In such a way that, lacking experience, there is no material for creation. All creation is nourished by experiences…

 

 

 

–Does the country, Juan Gonzalo, our reality have anything to do with your sadness?

–I think it is possible. Without a doubt the political climate influences.

 

 

 

–Not just the political climate. I was referring to the systematic mistreatment that this country administers to its poets, its musicians, to the best of its people in many cases...

 

 

 

–Yes, feeling unstimulated, always feeling expendable, this kind of often silent offensive, have to do with my depression but other factors also influence. For example, Dr. Mariátegui told me that it hurts me a lot not to have any financial security. This is true... I have reached the age I have reached and I live supported by my mother... My mother gives me shelter and food, but existence cannot be reduced to that. So I help myself with sporadic newspaper articles... And my mother is already a woman who is already in her 80s. Unfortunately, her lifespan is not going to be very long...

–You were fired from the National Institute of Culture, right?

 

 

 

-Yeah.

 

 

 

–During the management of Mr. Abril de Vivero?

 

 

 

-That's how it is.

 

 

 

–Why were you fired?

 

 

 

–They didn't give me any explanation.

 

 

 

–How much did you earn?

 

 

 

–Ten thousand soles.

 

With affection,

 

Ruben

 

 

Poems by Juan Gonzalo Rose

 

Poems by Juan Gonzalo Rose

Marisel

I remember that you were like the broken spring of roses

and like the words that children whisper

Smiling in your dreams.

 

I remember that you were

like the water that the blind drink silently,

or like the saliva of birds

when love tombs with joy in the eaves.

 

In the last sand of the afternoon you stretched

overwhelmed with grace your gazelle body

and the night came to your naked chest

as the rain approaches sailing ships.

 

And now, Marisel, life happens

without any moment bringing us joy.

Time must have died with us,

Or you must have loved me like I loved you.

 

Escape to the sea

Lock me up. Protect me. And stop me. Stop me. Here, now, everything is dark and silent. The shadow has erased every page. Barely, bending the glass petals, the dull murmurs of a street light and the flattering suspicion of autumn penetrate. Here, just us. The two of us, in our bedroom, while Lima shivers under the fog and a child like me, just like me, maybe myself, throws her verses on her shoulder and escapes towards the sea.

Exact dimension

I like you because you have the color of the patios

of the quiet houses...

and more precisely:

I like you because you have the color of the patios

of the quiet houses

When summer comes…

 

and more precisely:

I like you because you have the color of the patios

of the quiet houses on January afternoons

When summer comes…

 

and more precisely:

I like you because I love you

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, twice

I sat on your slope

to look at my life.

to look at my life

And not to contemplate you,

Because we need

Less beauty, Father,

And more wisdom.

(Report to the king and other secret books, Lima, 1967)

 

Clarity speech

Fire in the fire. Light in the water, Love in the heart: Never abandon me. Cistern that the moon will overflow, Rapturous might of snow: Shine in me. Forest Tune Accompany, forever, my joy. And let the shattered mirror be my death Where the sands of the day continue to burn.

(Report to the king and other secret books, Lima 1967)

I am already purified, poetry.

 

We can now look each other in the eyes

 

As in the afternoon of that light:

 

I played the round among children,

 

And your hands, trembling, chose me.

 

 

 

(Findings and Losses, Lima, 1968)

Fourth song

 

 

I'm drowning in the sky.

My heart bows

And the islands do not arrive.

Give me your hand then,

I want to die playing

The sweetest end of the earth

(Simple song, Lima 1960)

Fireflies and verses

 

Well, a worthy case is that of the bug.

 

What more lights

 

The more you die.

 

And not that of the man

 

That is overshadowed by few

 

And it's much darker

 

When it lasts.

 

(Quarantine, 1968 Collected in 1974 in O.P.)

Juan Gonzalo Rose

 

(Tacna, 1928 Lima, 1983)

Editor's Note:

Unfortunately, the language barrier often does not allow the translation to be the correct expression of the poet's thoughts in this case.

 

 

With affection,

Ruben