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