‘Biomorphic Abstract’ by Emilio Rodriguez Larrain, 1964, New York Museum of Modern Art, Paris, XXXII Venice Biennale, Museo De Arte De Lima, Peru

Signed, lower right, ‘E.R. Larrain’ for Emilio Rodríguez Larraín (Peruvian, 1928-2015), and inscribed ‘Roma, Nov 1963, Enero 1964’. (Rome, Nov 1963-January 1964). Verso titled, “L’Homme C’est Sujet à Errer” (Man Tends to Wander), and bearing the artist’s self-portrait in india ink and wash.

Exhibited: XXXII Venice Biennale, 1964. (original exhibition label verso)
Previously with Staempfli Galleries, New York. This painting is registered in the Archives of American Art as ‘Staempfli Gallery, inventory #775’.

A monumental and historically distinguished work by this groundbreaking Peruvian Modernist who drew inspiration from Peruvian indigenous and pre-colonial culture. The paintings of Emilio Rodríguez Larraín are held in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including the Musée de la Ville de Paris, Peru’s Museo de Arte de Lima and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This painting was selected by the Peruvian Government for exhibition at the XXXII Venice Biennale in 1964 and is the largest single recorded work by the artist.

Emilio Rodríguez Larraín received his Bachelors of Architecture in 1949 from Peru’s Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería and held his first solo exhibition in Lima after visiting Europe in 1950. In 1951, he returned to Europe in the company of the artists Alfredo Ruiz Rosas and Joaquín Roca Rey. In 1956, he moved to Paris where he painted and exhibited for many years, including at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (1957) and the Salon de Mai (1969). He also exhibited throughout Europe, including in Madrid, Berlin, Copenhagen, Florence, Milan and, in Rome, at the Italo-Latin American Institute (1970). In 2016, the Lima Art Museum held a retrospective of the artist’s work which lauded him as “an important avant-garde sculptor, architect and painter who knew how to adapt to the artistic changes of the time and who played a very important role in the visual arts of Peru.”

Over the course of a long and illustrious career, Emilio Rodríguez Larraín was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the William and Norma Copley Grant (1965), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and the DAAD Artist-in-Residence Program Grant (1985). Rodríguez Larraín is currently the subject of a one-man exhibition at New York’s Hutchinson Modern Gallery.

Framed in a later, iron-sulphate mordant oak frame. Framed Dimensions: 68 x 3 x 92 Inches

Reference:
E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 11, p. 817; et al.

Accompanied by ‘Rodríguez Larraín’, the exhibition catalogue for the artist’s 1963 exhibition at Milan’s Galleria Lorenzelli, and a first-edition copy of Sharon Lerner’s ‘Emilio Rodriguez Larrain’, published by Asociación Museo de Arte de Lima (2016).

(Photograph of the artist with Emily McFadden and Marcel Duchamp courtesy of the estate of Emilio Rodríguez-Larraín).