Abstract Earthtones or Neutral Paintings from Andes

Julio Tarqui (born in Ica in 1960) is a promising presence in Peruvian fine arts. His tendency toward the abstract, with traces of the figurative, brings us closer to the splendid Incan past with a pictorial language full of vitality, color and form. A graduate of the Escuela Nacional Superior de Bellas Artes, his painting is of genuine inspiration that rescues ancestral roots elevating the glorious pre-Hispanic past. His work evidences continuity between the past and present.

"I've painted since childhood, much before enrolling in the Escuela Nacional Superior de Bellas Artes. My work is inspired by pre-Hispanic cultures, and I want people to understand our glorious past so that new generations are aware of it and learn to love it. My painting focuses on the figurative abstract, but it's flexible and has no imaginative limits.

"Before beginning a work, I make an initial sketch to then pass on to the canvas. Sometimes I make variations on the plan, modifying the tones without sacrificing the composition. I paint until the composition achieves equilibrium in color and form and that's where I decide to stop. I've had forty collective exhibitions in my artistic career and some individual ones. I've proposed various goals for myself in my life - some I've achieved and some I haven't, but perhaps the most important is to have dedicated myself to art during difficult times in our country. That, I've achieved. I like to show my work and teach those who are interested; I'm totally open to teaching. To Novica clients, I'd like to ask them to let me be the artistic ambassador of my country and to show them, through my paintings, part of the grandeur of its glorious past."

In his painting of figurative and abstract construction, Julio Tarqui offers us a new expression of an old theme, urging the Inca past to wake up and respond to the secular silence, sustaining his audaciousness with tones and forms that constitute the finest of art.