PABLO AMARINGO
Pablo Amaringo( b. 1938, Puerto Libertad, Peru; d. 2009, Pucallpa, Peru) was born into a renowned family of shamans near Tamanco, a village on the banks of the Ucayali River. From a young age, he had experiences with ayahuasca and he became a healer and herb doctor at the age of twenty-seven, practicing for several years in Peru and Brazil. Under the guidance of herbal masters, he deepened his knowledge of the Amazonian worldview but, in 1977, decided to abandon shamanism to fully devote himself to his other great passion: art.
Self-taught, he is considered the father of neo-Amazonian realism and visionary art, styles that detail the Amazonian universe. The former focuses on the ecosystem of jungles and rivers, the latter on the dreamlike settings and characters of a specific ayahuasca mythology. In El baile de los Puca-bufeos( Puca-bufeos’ dance)( 2009), aquatic creatures such as fish, mermaids, and pink dolphins appear alongside other Amazonian animals covered in psychedelic ornaments deriving from the complex visions induced by entheogenic plants. In 1988, Amaringo founded the Usko Ayar art school in Pucallpa, Peru, where he taught his style to dozens of young Mestizo and Indigenous people.
( CHRISTIAN BENDAYÁN)
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