This article forms part of the debate pursuant to the Salón de Arte organized by the Escuela de Bellas Artes of Bogotá in 1904. It not only marked the beginning of the history of 20th-century Colombian art criticism, but also voiced a position crucial to the debate on Impression that arose in Colombia around the work of Andrés de Santamaría. From the time of this exhibition forward, de Santamaría—and the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism with which he was associated— would be important to the conceptualization and periodization of Colombian art insofar as associated with European avant-garde movements.
A number of different art historians and critics—among them Germán Rubiano (born 1938), Álvaro Medina (born 1942), Beatriz González (born 1938), and Eduardo Serrano (born 1939)—have returned to this debate to establish, from very different perspectives, the way it interpreted and assessed de Santamaría’s work. The influence of his work and teaching on his students is considered to have given rise to Modern art in Colombia.
Colombian writer and critic Baldomero Sanín Cano (1861–1957) played a critical role in the history of Colombian literature. As an essayist, he was a defender of Modernism, which is related internationally with Rubén Darío (1867–1916) and José Martí (1853–1895), and in Colombia with poet José Asunción Silva (1865–1896). As an art critic, in this article Sanín Cano sets the tone for the polemic of 1904, voicing a position in keeping with his radical cosmopolitanism. Others embroiled in the debate were Maximiliano Grillo (1868–1949), also known as Max Grillo, and Ricardo Hinestrosa (1874–1963), a Colombian lawyer and educator.
This article is attributed to Sanín Cano in the index of authors that the Revista Contemporánea published in Bogotá in its 6th issue (March 1905).
