Venancio Shinki (April 1, 1932 – November 17, 2016) was a Peruvian painter. Born in

Lima Lima ( ; ), founded in 1535 as the Ciudad de los Reyes (, Spanish for "City of Biblical Magi, Kings"), is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rive ...

to a Japanese immigrant father from Hiroshima Prefecture and a Peruvian mother, Shinki was raised on the Hacienda San Nicolás in Supe, north of Lima.

Education and career

When he was 15, Shinki traveled to Lima to work as a photographer apprentice, and at 21 he opened his own photographic studio. Over the years, he also worked as a professor in the Architecture Faculty of the UNI (Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria), as a graphic artist in the Expreso newspaper and as a public servant in the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. He later enrolled at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru, where he was taught by, among others, Sabino Springuett, Ricardo Grau and Juan Manuel Ugarte Elespuru. He graduated as the valedictorian in 1962 and received the

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and Joan Miro. In addition, the paintings display influences from his

Japanese Peruvian Japanese Peruvians ( or ''nipo-peruano''; , ''Nikkei Perūjin'') are Peruvian citizens of Japanese origin or ancestry. Peru has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after Brazil. This community has made a significan ...

heritage, with a mixture of Eastern, Western and Andean themes, along with compositions and figures inspired by

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

. He started participating in collective expositions in 1963. In 1966 he won the Teknoquimica award. In 1967 he received the National Award in Painting "Ignacio Merino" He has received many accolades and has participated in a variety of individual and group exhibits in Peru, Japan, Italy, the United States, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama and Mexico, among others. He also participated in the VII and XII Bi-annual in São Paulo, Brazil; the II Bi-annual of American Art in Argentina; the I and II Bi-Annual in Havana, Cuba; and the Bi-annual in Quito, Ecuador. In 1999, the year of the centenary marking Japanese migration to Peru, he was invited to exhibit his work in the Museum of Man in

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, Japan. His works were displayed in November 2006 during the 34th Annual Japanese Cultural Week in Lima, Peru. Shinki's painting "Lanzon" (1993) is owned by the Inter-American Development Bank. In 2013, some of his artworks were put up for sale in order to fund a project to form a children's symphony orchestra in Iquitos, Peru.

Death

Shinki died on November 17, 2016, aged 84.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shinki Venancio 1932 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Peruvian painters Peruvian male painters Peruvian people of Japanese descent College of Our Lady of Guadalupe alumni National Superior Autonomous School of Fine Arts, Lima alumni