Servulo Gutierrez Alarcon , was born in Ica in 1914 and died in Lima on June 21, 1961. Son of Daniel Gutiérrez Fernández and Lucila Alarcón Valverde. The peculiar landscapes of his native land, a mixture of desert and oasis, were his first source of inspiration, as were the images of the processions to the Lord of Luren, patron saint of Ica, which overflowed in drawings full of creativity. . From a very young age he worked as a waiter in his father's restaurant, later being a laborer in the construction of the Pisco-Castrovirreyna highway. On the death of his mother, he moved to Lima, living with his brother, who was dedicated to artistic restoration and crafts. This was his first contact with the knowledge of artistic techniques.
Sérvulo Gutiérrez in Argentina
In the capital, Sérvulo Gutiérrez exercised various trades, as different from each other as that of manufacturer of huacos and amateur boxer. Curiously, it was in this last condition that he had the opportunity to travel abroad, as a member of the Peruvian boxing team. In Córdoba (Argentina) in 1935 he won the title of South American bantamweight runner-up, a category in which he held the title of national champion. He did not return to Peru and remained in Buenos Aires for several years, working alongside Emilio Pettoruti, whose powerful influence is reflected in the classic rigor of the portraits and still lifes that Sérvulo Gutiérrez painted in those years.
Beginnings of painting
Sérvulo Gutiérrez traveled to France (1938-1940) and in Paris he lived intensely while freely studying painting and sculpture. He returns to Peru and, under the influence of Ricardo Grau, devotes himself to a passionate exploration of color that, after a figurative start, led to a highly original expressionism. In 1942 he wins the first prize in an exhibition on Amazon motifs, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the discovery of the Amazon River. In 1954 an exhibition of his works was held at the then Galería Lima. In his last ten years he returns to his Ica roots and his characteristic landscapes:the Huacachina lagoon, the desert, the palm trees ; At the same time, he begins to be recurrent in mystical images such as Santa Rosa or the Christs that he paints on any support that he has at hand:walls, napkins, newspapers, etc. Unanimously considered a "breaking point" in national art, he cultivated a rich and spontaneously colorful expressionism, simultaneously rejecting the constraints of academicism and informalist fashions. He had no precedents nor did he create a school and for the journalist Enrique Maticorena Estrada this “painter, sculptor, poet, decimist, reciter, boxer, bohemian and inveterate lover is the most typical Peruvian figure between the fifties and sixties…and the best exponent of expressionism Peruvian”.