Poet and occasional art critic Jorge Gaitán Durán asserts that the show Pintores colombianos jóvenes [Young Colombian Painters] was historically significant because it was the first salon of young artists held in Colombia. He states that the event is a watershed in the history of Colombian art due to its “contemporariness’ in relation to the universal Modern art movement, because earlier salons were characterized by academic and backward-looking naturalist formulations and rhetoric.” Similarly, those earlier salons failed to interpret the structure of their times because they were at a remove from the pictorial tendencies gripping the Americas as a whole. The author argues that the importance of this salon resides in the generational change it effects and in its new attitude toward art of the time. The works in and of themselves are less significant, he asserts; some of them are, in his view, a “sub-realist pastiche eked out of reproductions of Dalí.”

Due to the tense political atmosphere in Colombia during the conservative administration of Mariano Ospina Pérez (which lasted from 1946–50)—especially pursuant to the assassination of liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, which led to what is called the Bogotazo—the Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos was suspended temporarily. In response to the government’s failure to support forums for artistic debate and exchange, some artists and intellectuals organized independent salons with innovative formats and conceptions. One example is the exhibition Pintores jóvenes colombianos—also known as El Salón de los jóvenes—held at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogotá in 1947. José María Álvarez D’Orsonville, director of the Extensión Cultural y Bellas Artes division of the Ministerio de Educación Nacional, and poets Luis Vidales (1900–1990) and Jorge Gaitán Durán (1924–1962) were the figures behind that initiative.  

The salon served to legitimize the category of “young art”on the local art scene and to break with the notion of “the master artist” and, hence, the idea of what art should be. Rather than refer to quality or craft, the term “young” was related to the ideas of originality, rebelliousness and the future, all of which were associated with Modernism. The show was largely well received by critics. Indeed, Juan Friede (1901–1990), a Ukrainian art critic who lived in Colombia, commented that the event was a sort of salon of modern art or of independent artists. The exhibition featured more than two hundred works by fifty-nine artists, among them Marco Ospina, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Édgar Negret, Lucy Tejada, Hernando Tejada, and Julio Castillo. 

Jorge Gaitán Durán was not only a poet, but also an art critic and cultural administrator during the second half of the 1940s. He supported the movement led by liberal politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. During the uprising of April 9 known as the Bogotazo, he—along with Jorge Zalamea (1905–69)—participated in the takeover of Radiodifusora Nacional (National Public Radio).