ÃÂscar Guillermo Allain Cottera (19 September 1922 â 17 December 2025) was a Peruvian painter of French descent.
Allain was born in Lima, Peru, on 19 September 1922. He was the son of the marriage of the military man Guillermo Allain Soto and the novice Juanita Cottera Palomino. His father proposed that he study the militarization of the Chorrillos Military School. His mother died at the age of 22.
Allain studied at the National Superior Autonomous School of Fine Arts (ENSABAP) in Lima. He was a disciple of ("Apu-Rimak") at the centennial National School of Fine Arts as a member of the so-called "golden generation". He worked as a professor at the in Iquitos and at the in Huánuco.
Allain was a paradigmatic, testimonial and expressive painter of the coast, mountains and jungle of Peru. His plastic art captured the colors, faces and characters such as the painting of the artists Pancho Fierro, Francisco Laso, José Sabogal and Teodoro Núñez Ureta that expresses the man of Peru with his peculiarities.
Allaim participated in notable museums in Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid and London, observing the essential paintings. Throughout his career, he exhibited in galleries in Peru and beyond, such as the Cultural Center of San Marcos with the exhibition of the private collection of Bill and Cristina Kallop.
Allain relocated to Paris, France, for several decades. He lived in the Place de la Concorde and attended the flea market where he bought a military painting about his ancestors who were Sephardic Jews who had moved from Spain to Bordeaux, France, because of a terrorist threat. In France, Allain painted on the banks of the Seine river like the Impressionist painters, with the good fortune that the public bought his paintings as they were nearing completion. Among the various pictorial motifs we find women dressed in white represented in a watercolor entitled "Las chismosas". Allain pointed out that he liked to paint customs.
The independent painters are integrated by Ricardo Grau, ÃÂscar Allain, Francisco González Gamarra, Sérvulo Gutiérrez, Juan Barreto, Carlos More, Domingo Pantigoso, VÃÂctor Humareda, Carlos Quizpez AsÃÂn, Federico Reinoso, Bernardo Rivero, Ricardo Sánchez, Adolfo Winternitz and Sabino Springett, among others.
Allain formed the group 8 pintores which was made up of the painters ÃÂngel Chávez López, Aquiles Ralli, Enrique Galdos Rivas, Fernando Sovero, Gamaniel Palomino, Julio Camino Sánchez and Manuel Zapata Orihuela.
He was a member of the Association of Plastic Artists of Peru (ASPAP), and the Society of Authors and Composers of Peru (SAYCOPE).
Allain died on 17 December 2025 at the age of 103.
Allain's pictorial work seeks to reinterpret the art and culture of Peru. The independent master is a creator, an integrator who assumes the diverse identities of Peru, a country of diverse nationalities since the ancestors populated this wonderful nation.
This scenario encouraged Allain's creative spirit, highlighting the mastery with which he captures the world of the common man with his land, diversity of customs and traditions in a realistic, telluric symbology, creating his canvases with the colors of the homeland, flora and the fauna of the coast, mountains and jungle of Peru. In this historical framework, we find the diversity of human beings as protagonists of their ancestral genius that they obtain from the outside world.
In his journey around the world, Allain developed his pictorial experimentation, capturing the spirit, strength and resistance of man in his daily life with the intensity of the brush that processes his expressionist proposal to discover the feelings, the soul and the bones of the common man through the unity of color, shape and movement.
Allain with the pictorial technique of "telluric expressionism" is sensitive and eloquent to observers and experts of plastic art. This pictorial technique is characterized by light, dark and chiaroscuro strokes and the subtlety of the observation of his canvases.
The writer recognizes the value of his pictorial paintings and his transcendence in the article "Allain and everyday Peru". Characters such as the northern cholas, the fishermen, the banana vendors are part of his pictorial creation.
The painter Allain is accurate in his judgment about painting and its social role. The independent master expresses that painting is pure emotion because art does not mean portraying reality. Pictorial criticism makes his paintings recognized by the national and international public.
His long-standing pictorial work can be found in various places in Peru and the world. Master Allain has exhibited in countries such as France, Holland, Spain, England and the United States.
The painter ÃÂscar Allain has been artistically influenced by Teófilo Allain by the music of the "cholo" Carlos Pantoja who was also a neighbor of the Barrios Altos and the Cercado de Lima, a place where criollismo is intensely lived and the famous Amancaes fair.
Allain also worked as an announcer on Radio Delcar and on Radio Central. This locution work has created links with criollismo. Allain had as friends the criollo composers and singers Lucy Smith, , , Lorenzo Sotomayor Lishner, , , Alicia Maguiña Málaga, MarÃÂa de Jesús Vásquez Vásquez.
As a boxer, he obtained a trophy in the bantamweight category, however, the promoter Max Aguirre recommended that he not continue in the art of fists so that he could write a journalistic column in the newspaper '. The path of writing related him to writers such as MartÃÂn Adán and . The independent master is a walker who travels all over Peru.
His painting is also influenced by the world of bohemia and music. The RÃÂmac, the Barrios Altos and La Victoria are the triangle of criollismo in Peru. ÃÂscar Allain was influenced by this source and painted much of that history of singers, dancers and marinera dancers. Allain is the artist who bears witness to his time with his own style.
Among the awards and distinctions he has received we can find the following: