Fernando de Szyszlo was born in Lima on July 5, 1925. He is a renowned Peruvian plastic artist, known mainly for his work in painting and sculpture. He is one of the most outstanding avant-garde artists of Peru and a key figure in the development of abstract art in Latin America. After a frustrated attempt to study in the School of Architecture, in 1944 he entered the School of Plastic Arts of the Catholic University of Lima, where he had as a teacher the Austrian expressionist painter Adolf Winternitz. Two years later he left the School and continued an autodidact formation centered mainly in the international artistic avant-garde and in the pre-Columbian art. In 1947 he held his first exhibition, with a clear Cubist influence. Shortly thereafter it was the surrealist imprint that left its mark on his production. In the 1950s he exhibited on numerous occasions in his native country and also in the United States and Europe, an activity that increased in the following decade when he produced series such as Apu Inca Atawallpaman (1963) and Paisaje (1969). Between 1970 and 1980 he carried out new pictorial series within an expressionist and abstract tendency of strong chromatism, with examples such as Interiores (1972), Waman Wasi (1975) and Anabase (1982), the latter reflecting his continuous experimentation with open spaces, in which he plays with light, reflections and depth.