In essays and reviews, the criticism of writer, journalist, essayist, and university professor Baldomero Sanín Cano(1861–1957) was important to introducing modern thinkers to the Colombian context. His remarks on a specific painting exhibition—which barely make mention of the participating artists—were occasion for a series of observations that attested to the categories used to analyze art at that time. While some critics and artists continued to look back to Europe as the unquestionable model, Sanín asserts that the present should be seen as a novel problem in its own right rather than “a mere corollary of the past.”
While Sanín acknowledges that there is much to be learned from the past, he states that it is not the only teacher. He mentions the figure of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), who should not be seen as simply a passionate advocate of novelty for its own sake, but as one who warned of the danger of being tied to the past. In a conservative milieu where 18th-century Spanish artist Diego Velázquez was still considered the greatest master of all times and many artists considered Impressionism the only acceptable strain of Modern art, Sanín Cano’s remarks on Marinetti and Boccioni were forward-looking and unsettling. For Sanín, it is not a question of embracing what he considers the excesses of those Italian artists, but rather of recognizing that an appreciation of art from the past does not ensure good artists. It is necessary to know how to see; if not, works fail to show man and his landscapes, and the artist is reduced to technical expertise.