José Gabriel Mendoza & John Ricardo Cunningham
la palabra del mudo
José Gabriel Mendoza (1936-2010) and John Ricardo Cunningham (1918-1991) were among the last patients whose gouaches the renowned Peruvian psychiatrist Honorio Delgado collected in the 1960s at the Larco Herrera Psychiatric Hospital in Lima. While Cunningham’s works were previously exhibited at the gallery in 2018, this is the first time Mendoza’s works are being revealed to the public. Mendoza’s works will be showcased in the main gallery, while previously unseen pieces by Cunningham will be displayed in the bridge space.
Thanks to Professor Delgado, we began, more than half a century later, to seek out the works of these artists. The pieces preserved by their respective families, which we now have the pleasure of exhibiting, form a vibrant testament to creative impulses born within the asylum environment of that era. While Honorio Delgado appreciated these artistic productions through the lens of the psychopathology of expression, we, for our part, aim to make these ‘words of the voiceless’ resonate loud and clear, to paraphrase the title of the famous collection of short stories by the Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro.
