Self portrait in native costume

With a grounding of academic training, Francisco Laso (1823-1868) attempted to create a national school of painting. In 1842 he traveled to Europe where he stayed until 1849 as a student of the painter Charles Gleyre. Between 1852 and 1856 he again traveled to Europe. From 1860 he sought a greater participation in the politics of the country and toured the southern Andes in search of topics for his work. An exceptional testimony of this approach is the photographic portrait that he himself posed for, in native costume and seated on the ground, as part of the preparations for his celebrated pictorial series of the “pascanas”.