Teodoro Núñez Ureta

Who was Teodoro Núñez Ureta?

Dr. Teodoro Núñez Ureta was a Peruvian painter and a writer, noted for an original and distinctive style in Latin American art. His work often celebrated the life of the simple people of the Andes and the countryside, as distinct from a Spanish colonial legacy which had tended to ignore such topics. A child of a poor family in the provincial city of Arequipa, he began to learn to draw and paint on his own. His talent was discovered and nurtured at the Centro Artístico de Arequipa under Jose G. Alvarez. His artistic and academic studies continued to [detail needed] a Doctorate of Philosophy and Letters, with theses titled "Comrade Juarez" and "The Grotesque and the Comic in Art".

He became a professor and ultimately held the Chair of Art History and Aesthetics, at the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa. His costumbrista article "La Abuela" won him a National Journalism Award in 1943. His unique talents drew attention throughout Peru, especially in the national capital. Lima was more cosmopolitan than Arequipa, with an expatriate European contingent among its elite; this provided Núñez Ureta's reputation a conduit to international recognition. Art patrons Federico and Alice Gulda introduced him to art and literary circles abroad. This led to sponsorship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and travels around the United States in List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1943. His book "The Academy and Modern Art" followed in. Núñez-Ureta established himself in Lima from 1950. In 1959, he won the Ignacio Merino National Prize of Culture.