Fernando de Szyszlo

Fernando de Szyszlo is an important Peruvian painter who advanced the development of abstraction in Latin America starting in the mid-1950s. After traveling and studying both Old Master and Modernist art in Paris, he returned to Peru. There he became known for expressing subject matter specific to Peru’s history and culture in a nonrepresentational style. Featuring a vibrant palette and rich gestural brushwork characteristic of much abstract painting of the 1950s and 60s, this triptych was inspired by the tragic death of the Peruvian hero Tupac Amaru (d. 1572), the last indigenous leader of the Inca state.