Art, Nature, and Religion in the Central Andes: Themes and Variations from Prehistory to the Present

Chapter 9. Painted Boards (Tablas de Sarhua)

Painted boards, or tablas, were traditionally long planks divided by painted lines into rectangular sections containing typical designs and scenes. Each section featured painted portraits of the homeowners’ families and friends as well as images of religious symbols. The long plank shape was meant to fit on the ceiling of a family home under the main roof beam. The tradition of painting such boards and affixing them on the underside of house beams originated in Sarhua, a small town in the department of Ayacucho. Sarhuans install these works of art in their homes in recognition of their spiritual beliefs and in homage to the homeowners’ family and friends, many of whom collaborate in constructing the house for a newly married couple. Pictured on the beams were family members of the newlywed householders engaged in typical activities. Each family member was assigned a rectangular area within the painting. When political unrest forced many Sarhuans to migrate to urban areas, the house beams became cut boards usually cut between the places where the original family members’ individual painted spaces once had been. The more traditional long boards depicted family members and friends engaged in activities characteristic of them as individuals, along with standard locations, scenes, divinities, and other motifs. Scenes of Andean country life typical of groups were painted on the new, partitioned tablas for sale to an urban clientele and later to tourists. Bland nostalgia, however, is far from the only subject matter. Chapter 9 Painted Boards (Tablas de Sarhua) 263-278 strong_CH9.indd 263 2/6/12 11:34:01 AM 264 Andean Arts Today Contemporary boards have now become an outlet for Goyaesque political commentary and criticism. Most painted boards of Sarhua are now made and sold in Lima or overseas. The works come in all sizes and usually feature charming scenes of Andean rural life painted with commercial pigments and brushes on readily available easel-size, thin wooden boards. The esthetic, in terms of imagery, seems drawn from the instruction book Where There Is No Artist (Rohr-Rouendaal 1997). Figures have a standard look resembling those in many children’s book illustrations. Colors are pleasingly bright, the figures are few and large, and the designs tend more toward the static than the dynamic end of the continuum. In these ways, Sarhua painted boards resemble other highly salable folk art genres in the general global marketplace. However, the boards have a specific story of origin rooted in this particular small town. Some board painters incorporate aspects of the original tradition into their work; others combine the crowd-pleasing effects of the commercial style with depictions of the complexity of Andean traditional belief and custom.There are also boards that show commentary on current political and social events and other innovative themes. History and Use The tabla tradition has strong roots. Indigenous and Mestizo Andeans painted religious and social imagery on their homes and public buildings throughout their history and prehistory. There is evidently a very long tradition of painting, particularly wall painting, during the pre-Columbian period. Duccio Bonavia’s study Mural Painting in Ancient Peru (1985) traces this history from preceramic times through the age of the Inca empire.The earliest houses made of clay and other materials had painted walls. Homes at the site of El Paraiso, for example, had four-color murals. Chavín stone carving and incised-relief images served as models for later use of color on wall murals. Their mountain capital of Chavín de Huantar had numerous painted clay and plaster pieces done in relief. Birds, fish, felines, serpents, human beings,spiritual entities,geometric designs,and many other images appeared in these early paintings. The earliest and most prolific evidence of painting and painted sculpture that experts have found is on Peru’s coast. This coastal concentration is probably an artifact of the dry climate. The desert preserves remains, even feather capes and similarly fragile art works, in almost perfect condition . Bonavia as well as the famous anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and 263-278 strong_CH9.indd 264 2/6/12 11:34:01 AM Painted Boards (Tablas de Sarhua) 265 Julio C. Tello have posited that the mountain areas also had a strong mural tradition, though relatively few of these paintings remain today due to the colder temperatures and higher humidity characteristic of the climate at increased altitudes. Of pre-Inca cultures, the Moche are best known as painters. Tello studied...