[2][3] As Daniel Balderston, Mike Gonzalez, and Ana M. López assert, Sabogal "became Peru's militant indigenist and aesthetic nationalist, and led this movement for the next thirty years.

He traveled extensively in Europe (particularly Italy) and North Africa from 1908 to 1913 before enrolling in the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he studied for five years.

[6] Afterward Sabogal and Luis E. Valcárel cofounded the Instituto Libre de Arte Peruano (Free Institute of Peruvian Arts) at the Museo Nacional de la Cultura Peruana (National Museum of Peruvian Culture).

[6] As Jane Turner explains, "in 1919 was the first exhibition of the work of JOSÉ SABOGAL at the Casa Brandes in Lima, an event that would be immensely influential on the future..."[7] Sabogal decided to promote Peruvian art to international audiences after a 1922 visit to Mexico where he met Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

[6] These efforts were so successful that in "the field of the visual arts, the most striking phenomenon of the 1920s was the rise of José Sabogal (1888–1956), founder and long-time leader of the so-called 'Peruvian School' of painting.