Lake Titikaka, 1935 by Alejandro Mario Yllanes

Alejandro Mario Yllanes was a Bolivian painter and political activist who disappeared from public record in 1946 after winning, but not claiming, a coveted Guggenheim Foundation Grant. Although he showed in the Americas during his lifetime and saw his work acquired by a number of leading New York institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Public Library, it has not been exhibited publicly for almost 30 years. In July 2023 his work was shown for the first time in Europe at Ben Elwes Gallery. “With indigenous heritage, Yllanes addressed the subjugation, struggle and liberation of the Aymara people at a time of upheaval in Bolivian history,” Elwes says, adding that the artist’s death could “well have been a political assassination”.

In this oil painting, Yllanes depicts a raft worker crossing Lake Titicaca in Mexico. It is painted on a very coarse canvas/sacking material with two vertical joins presenting extensive undulations. When it arrived at our studio, the painting presented numerous condition issues: it had only two members of its frame present, left and bottom, which were all that was holding the canvas onto the strainer on those sides. Structural treatment involved lining the canvas and revealing its original dimensions by stretching it onto a larger stretcher. The top edge had suffered damage in the past so reconstruction was required to areas of lost canvas. One of the very special characteristics of this painting is that it remained in its original unvarnished condition, something which the owners were understandably keen to preserve: as a result, materials for filling and retouching the areas of loss had to be selected with particular care to matching the colour and sheen as it was not going to be an option to reintegrate them into the composition with an overall varnish layer at the end. In general, the paint layers were in a good and stable condition, but needed cleaning. Our Senior Conservator for Modern and Contemporary Art, Dr Rita L Amor Garcia ACR, carried out the treatment, with the collaboration of conservators Léonie van der Graf ACR, Alice Sherwood, Olivia Stoddart and Justyna Kedziora. The result has been hugely rewarding and we are delighted that the picture is now in its new home at Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

The top left corner, before, during and after treatment. Note the additional sections of composition that were revealed on the left and in particular at the top of the composition, which had previously been turned over behind the stretcher.