This article presents a characteristic that defines the approach of Lucy Tejada (1920?2011) throughout the 1950s, which earned her a place as an artist known and appreciated by most critics. Starting with some work created in 1949, through the show at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Tejada developed an iconography based on regional types and landscapes. She created these based on her evident interest in their links to the elements of the visual arts. In this regard, her approach won over those critics who defended these representations as historical records (such as Aristides Meneghetti) as well as those whose focus was more formal. Examples of critics more interested in form were the Polish critic Casimiro Eiger (1909–87), and the Argentine based in Colombia, Marta Traba (1923–83).
At the exhibition discussed here, with a catalogue text written by Traba herself, the artist presented paintings such as Mélida, Alharaca, Bodegón tropical, and Tacita blanca. In this set, Tejada would initially seem to be slowly pulling away from the regional theme of the “guajiro” [peasant], with still lifes or human figures in pale colors and calculated compositions. Secondly, there became an evident (and an admitted) influence of the artist Alejandro Obregón (1920–92). This influence can be seen in the way she defines precise angles in her forms, how she integrates the forms represented over geometric planes, and how she uses pendular and parabolic rhythms (common devices in the Latin American painting of the period).