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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Luis Eduardo Wuffarden.
“…I assumed art as a way to tell the truth…”[1]
La Oroya is dated 1959 when the promising young Tsuchiya had barely completed her studies at the Escuela Nacional Superior Autónoma de Bellas Artes in the city of Lima. There, she was an honor student in Enrique Grau’s workshop and had also come under the influence of Fernando de Szyzslo. Traveling to Paris in 1960, the artist lived and worked in Europe until 1975 when she returned to Peru. In 1976 her work was shown at the Enrique Camino Brent Gallery in Lima and by 1979-80, she was chosen to represent Peru in the São Paulo Biennial. In 1984 she was honored with a first retrospective of her work at Sala de Arte Petroperú. Tsuchiya’s works have been included in numerous exhibitions and found in many important collections throughout the Americas and Europe.
Inspired by the journey she had made to La Oroya in 1949,[2] this powerful early work reveals her interest in abstract expressionism as well as her personal concerns for her country’s contemporary social ills. La Oroya is a small mining town in central Peru where large American-owned smelting operations—mining for precious metals such as gold, silver, copper among others, provides employment for most of its citizens. Sadly, since smelting began in 1922 and due to the various owning corporations throughout the years which have not kept up with safe or clean technologies, La Oroya has earned the reputation for being one of the world’s most polluted places affecting the lives of those who toil daily in its mines to earn a living. Scuffles, riots and subsequent violence have erupted frequently over labor disputes during the ninety-three year history of smelting in La Oroya.
The artist’s choice of a stark color palette limited to brown-black hues for the three fallen figures in the foreground; muddy yellow and sooty-white for the background, creates the somber narrative’s gravitas. The compact arrangement of the figures, one of whom heroically raises his arms, dominates the composition while the artist’s use of greenish-grey for the tall smokestacks from which the noxious fumes emanate, block the sun and render the sky black. Eloquent and poetic, Tsuchiya’s condemnation of the industrial nightmare which harms man and nature, is a potent early masterpiece in her extraordinary body of work.
Unlike her later work in which she delved into personal and cultural myths translated into a delicate surrealist style, this formidable work has remained largely unknown. The noted art historian and curator Luis Eduardo Wuffarden who organized a retrospective of Tsuchiya’s work in 2000 with art critic Jorge Villacorta, did not know of its whereabouts and could not include it in the exhibition. La Oroya is thus an exciting new discovery that reveals much about the development of one of Peru's greatest masters.
Margarita Aguilar, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, New York
1) I. López-Calvo, The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013, 207.
2) Report prepared by Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, dated 9 November 2009.
“…I assumed art as a way to tell the truth…”[1]
La Oroya is dated 1959 when the promising young Tsuchiya had barely completed her studies at the Escuela Nacional Superior Autónoma de Bellas Artes in the city of Lima. There, she was an honor student in Enrique Grau’s workshop and had also come under the influence of Fernando de Szyzslo. Traveling to Paris in 1960, the artist lived and worked in Europe until 1975 when she returned to Peru. In 1976 her work was shown at the Enrique Camino Brent Gallery in Lima and by 1979-80, she was chosen to represent Peru in the São Paulo Biennial. In 1984 she was honored with a first retrospective of her work at Sala de Arte Petroperú. Tsuchiya’s works have been included in numerous exhibitions and found in many important collections throughout the Americas and Europe.
Inspired by the journey she had made to La Oroya in 1949,[2] this powerful early work reveals her interest in abstract expressionism as well as her personal concerns for her country’s contemporary social ills. La Oroya is a small mining town in central Peru where large American-owned smelting operations—mining for precious metals such as gold, silver, copper among others, provides employment for most of its citizens. Sadly, since smelting began in 1922 and due to the various owning corporations throughout the years which have not kept up with safe or clean technologies, La Oroya has earned the reputation for being one of the world’s most polluted places affecting the lives of those who toil daily in its mines to earn a living. Scuffles, riots and subsequent violence have erupted frequently over labor disputes during the ninety-three year history of smelting in La Oroya.
The artist’s choice of a stark color palette limited to brown-black hues for the three fallen figures in the foreground; muddy yellow and sooty-white for the background, creates the somber narrative’s gravitas. The compact arrangement of the figures, one of whom heroically raises his arms, dominates the composition while the artist’s use of greenish-grey for the tall smokestacks from which the noxious fumes emanate, block the sun and render the sky black. Eloquent and poetic, Tsuchiya’s condemnation of the industrial nightmare which harms man and nature, is a potent early masterpiece in her extraordinary body of work.
Unlike her later work in which she delved into personal and cultural myths translated into a delicate surrealist style, this formidable work has remained largely unknown. The noted art historian and curator Luis Eduardo Wuffarden who organized a retrospective of Tsuchiya’s work in 2000 with art critic Jorge Villacorta, did not know of its whereabouts and could not include it in the exhibition. La Oroya is thus an exciting new discovery that reveals much about the development of one of Peru's greatest masters.
Margarita Aguilar, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, New York
1) I. López-Calvo, The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013, 207.
2) Report prepared by Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, dated 9 November 2009.