## Peru’s new 200-sol banknote features pioneering painter Tilsa Tsuchiya

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**Canonical URL:** [Peru’s new 200-sol banknote features pioneering painter Tilsa Tsuchiya](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/03/cn.pdf)

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### Design and security features
- The front of the 200-sol banknote features a portrait of Tilsa Tsuchiya surrounded by fantastical creatures and cosmological motifs that inspired her art.  
- The reverse depicts Peru’s diverse flora and fauna, including an Andean cock-of-the-rock, the brightly plumed national bird.  
- The note meets high security standards and includes a unique machine-readable component, according to Crane Currency.  
- Embedded in a vertical stripe of a micro-optic security thread is an Andean cross of Incan and pre-Incan societies, known as a “chakana,” which expands and contracts when the note is tilted.  

### Production and recognition
- The 102-year-old central bank worked with British design company De La Rue to produce the note.  
- The industry group High Security Printing Latin America in June honored the 200-sol note, the currency’s highest denomination, along with smaller bills, as the best new series of 2024.  
- Crane Currency is named as a printer for central banks that worked on the security measures.  

### Cultural significance and featured figures
- The banknote honors Tilsa Tsuchiya and highlights values cited by an official at the Central Reserve Bank of Peru: “resilience, creativity, and cultural richness,” according to Abraham de la Melena, as reported by the Gestión newspaper.  
- Other figures celebrated as part of the series include Afro-Peruvian singer Chabuca Granda, novelist José María Arguedas, Inca historian María Rostworowski, and diplomat and engineer Pedro Paulet.  
- The 200-sol banknote connects people with a legacy of creativity, resilience, and cultural pride.  

### Artist biography and artistic influences
- Tilsa Tsuchiya was born in 1928 to a Japanese immigrant father and Peruvian-Chinese mother in the coastal district of Supe, north of Lima.  
- As a student in Paris in the 1960s, she was influenced by André Breton’s surrealist movement.  
- Tsuchiya’s art reflects her dual heritage and often incorporates pre-Columbian symbols to address themes of identity, femininity, and mythology in a distinctive style.  
- An example of her work noted in the source: Tsuchiya’s oil-on-canvas Bodegón still life is dated 1971.  

### Attribution
- Natalia Venegas Figueroa is on the staff of Finance & Development.  

*Source: IMF Finance & Development content unit (PDF chapter/section).*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/03/cn.pdf_