Saratoga News


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Art from the Heart

Hugo Lecaros paints with passion

By Loretta McCarty

Sometimes Hugo Lecaros' message gets lost when he speaks in his halting English accent, but when it comes to his art, the message is clear. His paintings, sophisticated in detail and color, portray the everyday lives of the people of his native Peru and hang in galleries and private collections all over the world.

Lecaros paints in his Saratoga studio off the kitchen of his modest, rented duplex. The room brims with brushes, paints, sketches and half-finished canvases. His oils and watercolors hang prominently on every wall of his home, serving as constant reminders of his days spent in the Andes.

"I am very rich, but I have no money," Lecaros said. "I don't paint with my eyes, I paint with my heart. Because if you don't have it here," he said, pointing to his chest, "you don't have anything."

He often works late into the night, sometimes throwing away half-finished pictures when colors and ideas don't mesh, said his wife, Carmen, a retired professor he met in Lima. One immediately senses the balance this quiet, warm woman with a serene smile provides to their 24-year marriage. She said Hugo often loses track of the hours when he paints, and she has to take him by the arm and lead him away from his work when it's time to sleep.

Lecaros' passion for his art is apparent when he speaks. His intense, deep-set black eyes light up, and his animated gestures become more exaggerated, mirroring the vivid brush strokes he applies to his canvases to bring his subjects to life.

"His oils are fantastic, with a lot of movement in the skies and mountains, and his watercolors are very simple and moving," said Pola Harrell, a fellow artist and sculptress, who met Lecaros in Peru 14 years ago.

His work shows the historian in him, she said. "He grew up in a very poor country, and his passion and social-mindedness for the people of Peru shows in all of his work," she said. "He will never stop painting Peru; it is profoundly a part of him."

Artist Janet Fullmer Bajorek, owner of the Iguana Galleries in Los Gatos, where many of Lecaros' paintings are displayed, said he is one of the few artists who earns his living just painting. "He is a man with strong ideas, honest, stubborn, very independent and committed to his work," she said.

"It's not something he just does to earn a living, it's something he loves to do," Bajorek added. "He wants to bring the message of the Andean Indians to the American people so that we can understand how they live. The people there live a very poor existence, but a very rich existence both spiritually and emotionally."

Life in the Andes is etched in Lecaros' memory beginning with the death of his parents, who died within six months of one another, leaving him an orphan at age 3. He was taken in by his aunt and uncle but roamed the streets of Cuzco and sometimes lived alone in the forest, where he slept out in the open air, surrounded by dogs.

When he turned 9, his uncle, tested by his young charge's rebellious temperament, took him to the jungle, where he worked cultivating rice and banana fields. Lecaros said he was happy there because it allowed him the freedom to draw and sculpt clay.

Working alongside the people of the Peruvian countryside, Lecaros was inspired by what he saw and was often caught by his teachers drawing sketches in school during lectures. He said he didn't do all that well in school, but he excelled in music and art, the subjects he liked.

His music is still important to him and he plays the guitar, harp, harmonica and a charango (little guitar), and sings like a pajarito, a "little bird," his wife said.

Recognized for his early talents, Lecaros won a scholarship to Cuzco's School of Bellas Artes at the age of 12, but studied there only briefly when money for his supplies ran out. Lecaros admits that part of the reason he left was that he didn't want to follow the rules his teacher had set down. He said he wanted to paint his way, not like everyone else.

He returned to the jungle and taught briefly in a rural school until he joined the army, where he spent two years. An old student at 29, he entered the Centro Superior Bellas Artes in Lima and received his degree in Artes Plasticas in 1975. He taught art history and drawing for 17 years in Lima. He eventually made his way to the United States, and Carmen followed him a few years later.

Lecaros is sometimes referred to as the Picasso of Peru, but Bajorek, who has several of his "Picasso-like" paintings in her gallery, said she disagrees with that assessment. He has done a few cubistic paintings, one on the back of a "For Sale" sign because he couldn't afford a canvas. But he doesn't fit into any category, she said. "He's not expressionist, stylistic or impressionist, but has a style more reminiscent of the thick, contorted and twisted brush strokes used by Van Gogh," she added.

His ideas don't come from photographs, but from his memories and experiences of Peru, he said. He composes them in his mind, draws them and stores them in a bulging sketchbook until he is ready to put them to canvas. Though most of his sketches are of Peru, some new subject matters are beginning to emerge, taking on the look of his Saratoga surroundings.

Some are whimsical in nature and show off his keen sense of humor. One of his sketches shows a small mouse running up a telephone pole next to a flock of birds perched on the lines. "This one I call, 'Communication,'" Lecaros said with a laugh.

Nearly 60, Lecaros said he is always working, even though it appears to those around him that he is just staring into space. "I am composing in my mind," he said.

Lecaros' paintings are all one-of-a-kind, and he doesn't do any prints like many other artists. He said that it is very important to do just one. "I am not painting for money; it is not a picture if you don't have just one," he said. What is important to him is that after he dies, people will remember him because he had the right attitude. "I paint for people; my pictures are not for me, but for the years later."

Hugo Lecaros' paintings hang in the United Nations building in Peru and are included in the collection of Helena Rubenstein and many other private collections in the United States, South America and Europe. Currently, 25 of his oils and watercolors are on display at the Iguana Galleries in Los Gatos and can be viewed by appointment only by calling 356-1057.