Rafo León and Pancho Guerra García: duo brushstroke

The two-person “León–Guerra García” reflects the view that two Peruvians, the painter Pancho Guerra García and the columnist Rafo León, have on society.

“Rafo is a narrator who paints,” says Guerra García, who has been teaching art in different cultural environments in Lima for more than 25 years. And he continues: “Your painting of him is not bland. “He has a lot to say.” What’s more, several of the paintings in this exhibition at Casa Fugaz, in Monumental Callao, are a response to the crisis that the country is experiencing. “You are born to express yourself, you can’t stop doing it until you die.”

Guerra García, for his part, is an artist who travels around the city by public transportation “collecting stories.” Much of that ends up captured in these canvases that show us a Lima that many do not see. “It’s amazing what happens on the street,” he says, still amazed, and assures that in public transportation “there is life” and it is a place where “people make alliances.”

Rafo, 20 years older, and with thousands of kilometers traveled through the corners of the country, responds: “Peru has changed a lot and in a very rapid way towards something that I do not judge, which is homogenization. Everything, every time, looks alike and it is a shame because it takes away the identity of the cities, the accents are lost, there is ugly architecture.” And when asked if Peru has a way to save itself? He responded: “I don’t know if Peru has enough to save itself, but I’m not going to live more than six years,” he says with a smile and adds: “I don’t apply to that question.”

The feeling for Guerra García is that in the midst of this improvisation at all levels, we live on the edge of the abyss, but “what saves us is humor.” To which Rafo adds: “The problem is that nobody cares. “People are doing something else.”

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