The dull gallery walls were aflame with pictures of orange and crimson plazas in Valparaiso and Santiago. Luis Herrera Guevara, a Chilean "primitive" painter of great splash & dash, was having his first U.S. exhibition, in Manhattan. He showed sailing boats in a topsy-turvy port, ornate buildings with leaning façades, a bus looking like an enlarged caterpillar, a self-portrait revealing a jaundiced gentleman with jet hair. Critics were enchanted. They could not fail to make comparisons with the pigmental innocence and charm of France's late, great "primitive" Henri "Douanier" Rousseau.
Chile's Herrera was...
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