The Peruvian artist with a permanent exhibition at the Reina Sofía who affirms that Velázquez or Van Gogh are not art

Many times coincidences are not as coincidences as they seem. The Peruvian artist Herbert Rodriguez He exhibited his work in his country’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022 (Peace is a corrosive proposition was the title of that exhibition) as his countrywoman did Sandra Gamarra in 2019 and this same one in the current Spanish pavilion of the same exhibition. The Peruvian Gamarra represents Spain (it is not known why) against Spain and in favor of the black legend, a key theme in the formal and one might say spiritual revisionism that dominates contemporary art.

Contemporary art must be ideology because without it it is nothing. It’s not art. What seems like a delirium is a reality. In the previous paragraph we talked about coincidences that are not such in the case of Rodríguez and Gamarra, both graduates in Arts from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and with similar desires and “inspirations.” The art that is sold today in such a way that the arrogant and sectarian detachment towards classical art on the part of its makers even begins to emerge. Herbert Rodríguez has said that he did not become an artist to be a “complacent decorator.”

“Decoration” is what this artist calls figurative art, for example, and He affirms that in Peru they call “painting still lifes and birds” art because “the level is mediocre”. That is to say, for this important artist of today, internationally recognized, from the Venice Biennale to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, where he has had a permanent exhibition since 2019, the Still life with pots and pans of ZurbaranFor example, it is not art. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. It is real.

The author of works with improbable titles such as Structural violence either Ayacucho in your heart and childish forms and techniques, he proudly assures that Zurbarán is not art. He is neither Van Gogh in his sunflowers or the impressionists like manet either Cezanne in his still lifes and still lifes. “Little birds” have painted great masters that for Herbert Rodríguez are not art, or better: “mediocre” art like the one he says is styled in his country, not like in Europe and Spain where his great works are exhibited in the great museums and exhibitions. works like these:

In the triptych The garden of delights of Hieronymus Bosch “little birds” and many other animals emerge: mediocre art for Herbert Rodríguez, author of, for example: Murders, drug addiction, crime, torturethe work that simply consists of writing “Murders, drug addiction, crime and torture” on a canvas, as in others he has written War, abandoned elderly, misery, attacks. An extraordinary difficulty, of extraordinary value and technique, artistic and inspiring, full of beauty compared to, for example, the human still life of Las Meninas of Velazqueza “mediocre” artist according to Herbert Rodríguez (from whom the Parisian Pompidou Center has just acquired a collection of works) a prominent representative, like his compatriot Sandra Gamarra, of the new ideological current that is imposed in art and in the world to give the return and that in reality attacks him through its sectarianism and its emptiness, also financed by the powers.