Sérvulo Gutiérrez

Sérvulo Gutiérrez Alarcón (1914 – 21 July 1961) was a Peruvian artist, described by The Times as "Peru’s most celebrated painter". He was initially untaught and self-educated, but then trained under the artist Emilio Pettoruti. Gutiérrez had a relationship with Doris Gibson.

Life

Sérvulo Gutiérrez was born in Ica. He had little in the way of normal education and initially trained in Lima to be a boxer. He moved to Buenos Aires, where he focused on pottery of the Pre-Columbian period, establishing premises to both conserve such items as well as to manufacture new ones in the tradition of that style.

Gutiérrez was self-taught until he had the opportunity to study in Buenos Aires for eight years with the major Argentine painter, Emilio Pettoruti (1892–1971). He travelled to Paris in 1938, where the study of work by French artists broadened his approach away from an academic direction towards a delineated and sculptural Expressionist style, which he pursued after his return to Peru in 1942. After an argument between them, he sold a full-size nude painting, which he had done of her, to a well-off businessman. Gibson arrived at the businessman's house with a photographer and, on the pretext of needing daylight for a photograph, took the painting outside and promptly drove away with it. When he later asked for its return, she responded, "I don't want to be nude in your house."

He died in Lima on 21 July 1961.