The text, ¡Al Fin Pintura! (1976) [Painting, at Last!] was an introduction to the exhibition with the same name at the Galería Belarca in Bogotá, organized by Eduardo Serrano. This art critic emphasizes the acceptance of the drawing and the print as languages for study and experimentation in contemporary Colombian art, even considering them to be final artworks. But the exclamation “¡Al Fin Pintura!” alerts us to the importance of painters in those years in the development of “a profound expression of Colombia’s own themes in the difficult medium of painting.” Serrano states that the exhibition features eleven different searches and creative solutions with one common, descriptive element: “application of color on a surface.” This opened the way for works by the following artists to set the standards of the day: Luis Caballero, Santiago Cárdenas, Hernando del Villar, Beatriz González, Manuel Hernández, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Darío Morales, Javier Restrepo, Carlos Rojas, Ned Truss and Manolo Vellojín.

The text for the exhibition, ¡Al Fin Pintura! (1976), by Eduardo Serrano Rueda (b. 1939), art critic and curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] of Bogotá, is a document basic to the understanding of pictorial investigation and experimentation during the 1970s, the heyday of both drawing and painting in Colombia.

The art historian, Carmen María Jaramillo (b. 1958), states that the concept of painting became malleable at that point. In her opinion, “the terms color and surface transcend the meanings of oil and canvas.” Jaramillo notes that this exhibition introduces a broad spectrum of approaches: “the visual approaches of the artists invited to show their work go from optical illusionism, expressive realism, and Abstract art—specifically sensitive, i.e. geometric art—to various forms of a kind of Pop, which works with spot colors. Among the artists included in the exhibition, Beatriz González, Santiago Cárdenas, Manuel Hernández and Luis Caballero had introduced innovations in painting in the 1960s. The other artists in the show explore the photographic image or the interior of spot colors, perhaps as a response to the color tones most valued and expressive in the creative work predominant in the recent past.” This overview by Jaramillo appears in Manifestaciones de la crisis del arte moderno en Colombia: 1968?1978 [Manifestations of the Crisis in Modern Art in Colombia: 1968?1978] (Bogotá: Universidad National de Colombia, 2001), which was submitted as a master’s thesis in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture.

When he wrote this article, Eduardo Serrano was serving as a curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, at the same time he was also involved with the Galería Belarca (founded in 1969). At the time, Serrano had recently returned from his studies of Anthropology and Art History at New York University. Shortly after his return, he started work as the director of Galería Belarca. During the first half of the 1970s, he published a considerable number of articles in catalogs and nationally circulated newspapers. A selection of these texts were gathered in the book, Un lustro visual: Ensayos sobre arte contemporáneo colombiano [A Half Decade in the Visual Arts: Essays on Contemporary Colombian Art] (1976).