Existing works of art have always played an important role in the education of artists, as they serve as visual learning models as well as inspiration for new works. During the 20th century, the increased distribution of works of art directly related to the progress of the printing press and to the development of medias have contributed heavily to the development of practices related to the use of existing artistic elements in painting. With Picasso, this use of existing elements consisted in the appropriation and reinterpretation of masterpieces, which he then transcribed in his own style. As such, in 1957, he paints forty four variants based on Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” (1656). In the early sixties, pop artists used serigraphy to print photographic reproductions of art masterpieces. These reproductions used a certain esthetic quality, a direct result of such method, which would continue to be developed afterwards. Thus, when Lichtenstein made his versions of “The Rouen Cathedral” (1892 – 1894) originally by Monet in 1969, the image was composed by a series of dots, the graphical equivalent of the printing process of a photograph when printed in the press. During the seventies, the artistic collective Equipo Cronica used the great Spanish and European art classics in the creation of works that used plain colors and shapes in their recreation.Inspired by these works, several latin american artists have created their own styles. The works of Peruvian Herman Braun-Vega, for example, mixes the works of great masters such as Velazquez, Goya or Picasso and Peruvian visual imagery. Like Picasso, Fernando Botero uses the works of masters and remakes them using his own personal style. At the end of the sixties, the Peruvian fine arts take on elements present in International Pop’Art in order to portray different aspects of Peruvian culture. Thus, Marcel Velaochaga combines the pop aesthetics with a critical thinking of Peruvian history and its own visual icons.
