Colombian writer and critic Luis Vidales (1900–1990) was the director of the magazine Espiral during its early period (Bogotá, 1944–46). In this article, he defends a new aesthetic and takes pains to explain that what is often called “the deformity” of new art is, in fact, evidence of its rupture from Renaissance and individualistic models. He argues that what is called “ugliness” is passage to another type of beauty, one that accompanies the death of one society and the birth of another pursuant to historical events like World War II. This article is in keeping with Vidales’s position in other writings, specifically Tratado de estética [Aesthetic Treatise] (1945) which formulates art as an indisputably social phenomenon. [See doc. no. 1080374.]
The editorial in this first issue of the magazine underscores the aim of the publication as a whole: offering an interpretation of current art to a non-expert public, a vision that takes into account the questions of innovation and change. This publication would defend the idea that art is an expression of the life of man for the common good. Vidales’s thinking suggests the belief that the artist must be an active citizen engaged in his social environment.
In keeping with its interest in an art for the masses, Espiral addressed the subject of muralism often. The magazine also partook of attempts to define a specifically American art, an “art of our own,” to use the term common in earlier decades in other Latin American countries. There seems, in this magazine, to be an underlying concern with finding a single definition of “the Colombian” and “the American,” and a deep-rooted belief that art can contribute to that task.