Send Colissimo

Wetness and marks

See photo

Barrientos' painting is figurative and narrative: he creates dreamlike and chaotic universes, populated by human and animal figures where personal history irremediably intersects with that of the Andean world. This work, which began in the 1980s, can be compared to the neo-expressionist movement of the same period which developed in particular in Italy with the Transavangarde (Chia, Cucchi, Paladino, etc.) and in Germany with the new German painting (Polke, Kiefer, Baselitz, Lüpertz). This movement, which is part of the direct heritage of Van Gogh and Picasso, was then interpreted as a reaction against conceptual art. Nothing is less certain, what defines it above all is a revaluation of the artist's individual territory and a reappropriation of collective myths through the medium of painting.

In addition to his clear affinities with these European artists, Barrientos' references are above all "continental", he likes to cite Huaman Poma de Ayala, the first Peruvian chronicler of the 16th century who, through illustrations and stories, relates the Spanish conquest and the fall of the Inca empire and the ex-votos of the Mexican Frida Kalho.