The Centro Cultural Inca Garcilaso in Lima opened a new exhibition on Tuesday, September 15, honoring painter Armando Villegas on the centenary of his birth. The show, titled "Un universo habitado. Homenaje a Armando Villegas" ("A World Inhabited: Tribute to Armando Villegas"), opened at midday.
The Centro Cultural Inca Garcilaso, run by Peru's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is located in the historic center of Lima and takes its name from the sixteenth-century chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
The Villegas tribute follows a major retrospective dedicated to photographer Martín Chambi, which drew more than 30,000 visitors, most of them young people, and stood as the most important cultural event of the year at the venue. Chambi, who worked in the early twentieth century, is remembered for his photographs of Andean life and landscapes in southern Peru. His archive, based in the city of Cusco, has been exhibited internationally and is considered one of the most significant photographic records of the Andean world in the twentieth century.
Villegas was born in Pomabamba, a town in the mountainous Áncash region of northern Peru, and died in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2013. The Peruvian-Colombian painter built a body of work in which abstraction met pre-Columbian culture, creating a visual tension that made him one of the precursors of fantastic realism, an artistic current that blends recognizable imagery with dreamlike, mythic or symbolic elements, through his use of Andean myths, symbols and designs.
A Painter Between Two Countries
The centenary of his birth arrives at a moment when many artists around the world are turning back to ancestral cultures for inspiration, underlining the continued relevance of an approach Villegas pursued from the start of his career.
He developed and consolidated that style in Colombia, where he lived for many years after arriving in 1951 to study mural painting. His ties to the country ran deep: he later took Colombian nationality after finding the opportunities there to grow as an artist.
Works on Display
Among the pieces on show is a large painting of Túpac Amaru II, which Villegas donated to Peru's Palacio de Gobierno in 2003, during the government of President Alejandro Toledo. The work is now part of the Salón Túpac Amaru at the presidential palace. Túpac Amaru II led a major indigenous uprising against Spanish colonial rule in the Peruvian Andes in the eighteenth century and remains one of the most recognized symbols of indigenous resistance in Peru.
The exhibition is curated by Ana Osorio and brings together 48 works spanning different periods and styles, including oil paintings, engravings and sculpture.
Ranked Among Colombia's Top Painters
In Colombia, Villegas is regarded as one of the country's six most important painters, ranked alongside Fernando Botero, Alejandro Obregón, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Enrique Grau and Guillermo Wiedemann. Botero is internationally known for his paintings and sculptures of exaggerated, rounded figures, while Obregón is considered one of the central figures of twentieth-century Colombian modernist painting. Ramírez Villamizar was known for his geometric abstract sculptures, and Grau and Wiedemann were prominent figures of Colombian modern painting in the mid-twentieth century.
"Un universo habitado" is on view at Jr. Ucayali 391, in the Cercado de Lima district, until November 1, 2026.
