Panorama eléctrico by Peruvian artist Armando Villegas exemplifies a stylistic trend that emerged in the Andes after World War II. This new style drew inspiration from pre-Columbian forms as a means to distinguish Andean abstraction from both Indigenism, which preceded it, and from variants of abstraction, which had emerged in Europe and other parts of the Americas. Painted in subtle washes of greens and browns, Panorama eléctrico defies clear orientation. Villegas allowed the thinned paint to drip and bleed from the original strokes, but later rotated the canvas so that the drips run sideways. Depicted are a series of geometric shapes connected with a network of lines creating an asymmetrically patterned surface, perhaps the electrical circuits noted in the title. The shapes suggest eyes or symbols, but never coalesce into recognizable forms. Villegas explained his process in a 1957 article: “It’s not that I want to make a sort of abstractionist folklorism, but rather, within the abstractionist technique, I attempt to valorize a form of expression that is entirely ours that is entwined with an artistic past that goes back for centuries.” Villegas does not directly reference specific pre-Columbian motifs—abstractly patterned textiles, pottery, architecture, or glyphic writing—but rather alludes to an imagined past. Simultaneously, these paintings also partake of the modernist language of abstraction, referencing Pollock’s drip paintings, tachisme, or Helen Frankenthaler’s translucent washes of pastel colors. These multiple references therefore allow the painting to signify on both universalist and regionalist levels. Born in Pomabamba, Peru, Armando Villegas studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Lima from 1945 to 1951. In 1951 he moved to Bogotá, Colombia where he studied for one more year at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Bogotá (1952-1953), and ended up settling there permanently. It was in Colombia that he began to experiment with abstraction. Villegas held his first individual exhibition of figural paintings at the Galerías Centrales de Artes in Bogotá in 1953, but did not garner much notice. By 1955, once he had fully established himself as an abstract painter, he began to achieve acclaim. He held two individual exhibitions, one in Bogotá at the Galería Callejon and a second in Lima at the Galería San Marcos, in addition to participating in a group show of “arte abstracto” in Colombia. His paintings blend the colors and textures of Andean textiles and pre-Columbian motifs with an international abstract aesthetic. His success in 1955 led to other exhibitions in Medellín and Caracas, and an invitation from José Gomez Sicre to hold a solo show of his paintings at the Pan American Union in 1958. In 1959 he again exhibited in Lima at the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo becoming one of the founding proponents of abstraction in Peru. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he held numerous exhibitions in Lima and Bogotá. During this period he also participated in the Bienal de São Paulo, the Guggenheim International Art Festival in New York, and group shows in Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, and the United States. Later in his career Villegas began to incorporate figurative elements in his paintings again, primarily in the form of symbols and mythological references.