September 11, 2025-January 25, 2026

This exhibition brings together works by Peruvian artists from the collection of the Art Museum of the Americas of the OAS, a testament to a tradition that engages in dialogue with modernity and projects itself into the future. Peruvian art has skillfully transformed its ancestral heritage into a constant source of innovation and creativity. In every stroke, shape, and color, we discover voices that connect the local with the universal, the intimate with the collective.

Peru’s contribution to American and global art lies not only in the uniqueness of its aesthetic expression but also in its ability to reveal the human condition in its broadest dimension: our shared hopes, tensions, and dreams. These works invite us to recognize ourselves as part of a cultural tapestry that enriches the American identity.

Since the 1940s, the OAS has maintained a close relationship with the development of modern and contemporary art in Peru. As early as 1947, the works of José Sabogal were included in the OAS art exhibition Contemporary Latin Americans. Fernando de Szyszlo exhibited in 1953 and spent a few years working at the OAS. Arturo Kubotta exhibited in 1961 as part of the exhibition Japanese Artists of the Americas, and Julia Navarrete exhibited in 1982 as part of  the Homage to Women Artists of the Americas exhibition.

This exhibition highlights the diversity of Peruvian art of the AMA collection, through a historical visual tour thatexplores themes such as: Peruvian graphics through the work of José Sabogal; Peruvian lyrical abstraction through the work of Armando Villegas, Antonio Maro and Fernando de Szyszlo; geometric abstraction through the brushstrokes of Carlos Davila; the role of Japanese migration to Peru and its impact on the visual arts through the work of Arturo Kubotta, Venancio Shinki, Eduardo Tokeshi, and Carlos Runcie Tanaka; as well as recent photography through the lenses of Maria Cecilia Piazza and mainstay of the OAS photography exhibitions program Susana Raab.

Maricruz Arribas and Eduardo Tokeshi held key 21st century exhibitions (in 2000 and 2003, respectively) in the same OAS Main Building House of the Americas Gallery where Syszslo and Villegas exhibited a half century earlier (in 1953 and 1958, respectively). Carlos Runcie Tanaka, the recipient of OAS scholarships in 1981 and 1986, has gone on to contribute core installation work to its permanent art collection, and was featured in the landmark No Ocean Between Us: Art of Asian Diasporas in Latin America & the Caribbean exhibition in 2021.

Here we see a heady sampling of not just the broad range of creations and contributions of Peruvians to the global art landscape, but threads that weave through the nation’s art history. For instance, the hand of Indigenous art remains palpable in the contemporary art of the region, from Sabogal to Szyszlo and beyond. We see regional identity burst forward even in abstract and geometric forms. Overall, there is a wellspring of visual arts that continues to flow from Peru, rooted in paths already traveled while forging new terrain.

This exhibition is presented by the Embassy of Peru in the United States, the Permanent Mission of Peru to the Organization of American States (OAS), in the spirit of celebrating the artistic and cultural diversity of the country and their reach contribution to the AMA collection.

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