Peruvian painter and sculptor, born on 16 November 1937 in Trujillo (Peru), died on 22 June 2025 in his home town.
Life
Gerardo Chávez López graduated from the National School of Fine Arts of Peru. By 1960, at twenty-two, he had already exhibited more than five times in his own country and shown his work in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. He also exhibited in Europe, notably in Florence (Galleria Lo Sprone), Rome, Paris (Galerie Jacques Desbrières) and Amsterdam.
In Trujillo he became a leading cultural figure. With María Ofelia Cerro Moral he initiated the Trujillo Contemporary Art Biennial, created in 1981 and revived in 2024. In 2001 he opened a Toy Museum, and he founded a Museum of Modern Art and a cultural space named Angelmira, in tribute to his brother. He is seen as an heir of the Grupo Norte, a circle of intellectuals and artists born in Trujillo.
He was made a Grand Officer of the Order of the Sun of Peru in 2006. In 2022 he published his memoirs, Antes del olvido, in which he looks back on a childhood marked by the loss of his mother.
The work
His painting is peopled with mythical beings. In the 1970s he painted in oil on canvas, before working with earth on jute. In 1995 he produced La procesión de la papa, a set of six pieces in which the Andean potato is carried in procession.
Chávez described himself as an intuitive painter and acknowledged affinities with the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. “Mythology is universal,” he used to say.
Exhibitions
- “A Journey through Latin America”, with Jorge Camacho, Joaquín Ferrer, Roberto Álvarez Ríos, Ramón Alejandro, Mauro Mejiaz and Jorge Vigil, 18 April to 31 May 2025