In the article “Marta Traba: Décadas vulnerables” [Marta Traba: Vulnerable Decades], Aracy Amaral provides a sketch of the intellectual persona of art critic Marta Traba on the occasion of her tragic death in a plane crash in 1983. Amaral recounts Traba’s career through their relationship, recalling when she first came into contact with Traba’s works (at the Austin Symposium in 1975), as well as their many later meetings. Amaral recognizes the important role that Traba played in giving shape to autonomous thought on the nature of Latin American art, specifically in the work Dos décadas vulnerables en las artes plásticas latinoamericanas 1950–1970 (1973) [Two Vulnerable Decades for Latin American Visual Arts] which—along with Aventura Plástica de Hispanoamérica [The Visual Arts Adventure in Latin America] (1974) by Damián Bayón—she sees as a seminal publication. Those books were partly responsible for the fact that the organizers of the Austin Symposium in 1975 chose the theme “external models and the artist; and the problem of identity” for that event. Amaral also emphasizes the importance of Traba’s notions of “open areas,” “closed areas,” “deadline,” and “art of resistance” to discussions between Latin American art critics. Lastly, she reconstructs the shifts in Traba’s work because of the many times she had to move from one country to another (among them Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, the United States, and France) as a result of the political upheaval in the region that so affected her life. Thus, Amaral detects in Traba’s work, as well as her personal relationships, the “sensibility of the exile” capable of adapting to different milieu and hiding her roots.

“Marta Traba: Décadas vulnerables” was one of the first biographical sketches of Argentine art critic Marta Traba (1923–1983) published in Colombia after her death. It attests to how Traba’s work was perceived and the significance of her thinking throughout the region.  

The importance of the text is twofold: first, it provides an assessment of Traba’s work beyond the Colombian context; second, it reveals Amaral’s particular vision of every aspect of Traba’s critical work. Brazilian art historian and curator Aracy Abreu Amaral (born 1930) is a key figure in Latin American art history and criticism because of her contribution to the understanding of Brazilian Modern art and architecture. Her outstanding research includes an in-depth study of Tarsila do Amaral (1988–1973).   

The contrast between this text and the one by Germán Rubiano (born 1938) published in the same issue of the Revista Arte en Colombia is significant. In his text, art historian Rubiano discusses the role that Traba played in Colombian art. [See “Marta Traba y el arte colombiano,” doc. no. 1079706]. Whereas Amaral’s text reviews Traba’s professional life and the conceptions that made her central to the development of autonomous thinking in Latin American art criticism, Rubiano makes no mention whatsoever of these aspects.   

Together, these two texts provide a complex image of Traba’s work, one that corresponds, to a certain extent, to two periods in her career: work produced while she resided in Colombia (from 1955 to 1969), and later work from the 1970s that delved into questions surrounding the situation of Latin America art, which was always the crux of her thinking and production.