The decision of the jury at the painting salon presented at the Club Unión in Medellín in November 1939 incited indignation and protest amongst traditional painters from the Antioquia region. The main voices of the traditionalists were Eladio Vélez (who had been Débora Arango’s teacher) and Gustavo López. The irate letter they sent to the members of the jury—Carlos Posada Amador, José Posada Echeverri, and Félix Mejía Arango—was published in a newspaper based in Medellín, the capital of the Department of Antioquia. With ironic phrases like “your decision is too laughable to hurt us,” the writers of the letter repudiate the supposed contradictions in the document where the jurors voice their decision and the reasons for it. They describe the conceptual basis for the jury’s decision as “pitiful” and its “reasoning shabby and partial” insofar as it privileges “new formulations of beauty and a sense of defiance and boldness over the intrinsic value” of the work. Thus, a rupture occurred in the formerly continuous artistic tradition of Antioquia and a polemic involving two distinct groups took shape. Indeed, the dispute would go on for years and embroil the liberal and conservative press, as well as politicians and the Church hierarchy. The following month, Vélez published “Mi testamento” (El Colombiano newspaper, Medellín, December 4, 1939), another ironic and enraged text in which he further satirizes the “Pedronelistas,” or followers of mural artist Pedro Nel Gómez.

In November 1939, a painting by Débora Arango Pérez (1907–2005) entitled Hermanas de la Caridad [Sisters of Charity] was awarded a prize at an exhibition held by the Sociedad de Amigos del Arte in Medellín. The award-winning work was not one of the two large-format watercolors depicting female nudes in unusual positions that Arango Pérez presented in that exhibition as well; those works gave rise to a polemic in which the press was forced to take sides. The jury’s decision to grant a prize to this painting—as opposed to one of the nudes—was a means to avoid greater scandal while also recognizing this talented Colombian artist.

Gustavo López (b. 1908), a painter who never gained much recognition, and Eladio Vélez (1897-1969)—who had been Débora Arango’s teacher and was an old friend and classmate of Pedro Nel Gómez (1899–1984) when both were studying in Italy—were the authors of this aggressive letter. In it, they assert that there are two distinct and antagonistic artistic currents embroiled in what they call a “battle to the death.” The first group consisted of the “Eladistas,” who defended the tradition established by Francisco Antonio Cano; the second consisted of followers of a new trend established by mural artist Pedro Nel Gómez, one that eschewed academicism and embraced humanist and nationalist concerns.

This document reflects the frictions occasioned by the first expressions of modern art in the Antioquia region, works that threatened the dominance of traditional art in a city like Medellín that was undergoing rapid economic modernization and industrialization while the elites clung to Catholic values and beliefs.