Elena Izcue’s *Peruvian Art at School* (1926) – The Public Domain Review

Although the introductory texts and excerpts from reviews of El Arte Peruano usually refer to “Inca art”, the majority of the designs are inspired by works from other, earlier cultures. A parade of mice appears to be inspired by Nazca ceramics, while a feline with an arcuate back resembles figures from Paracas or Chancay weaving. The motifs have been abstracted from their original context, without information about their symbolic meaning or what the objects from which they were taken would have originally been used. This flattening, like Natalia Majluf and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden arguepresents the pre-Hispanic world not as a tapestry of cultures that alternately flourished and faded, united and warred, but as a single homogeneous mass. As a result, it was easier to do that rhetorical package the modern Peruvian state – ethnically diverse and arising from bitter territorial disputes with its neighbors – as united and eternal, the true heir of Tawantinsuyu. A former teacher herself, Izcue is explicit in her desire to give children not only an artistic education, but also a civil education: Izcue’s foreword appeals to the “patriotic feelings” of teachers and expresses the hope that her workbooks will inspire “a strong nationalism, serious and fruitful, which today’s teachers have a sacred duty to foster.”