Written by Marta Traba and published in the magazine Arte en Colombia, “El VII Salón Atenas” is perhaps the harshest criticism of the Colombian salons held in November. Traba argues that despite belief to the contrary, the Salon Atenas has not played an important role in strengthening contemporary art in Colombia; its supposedly avant-garde bent has ultimately proven superficial and given rise to “confusion about [artistic] values.” Traba asserts that most of the so-called “groundbreaking” works exhibited at the salon were, in fact, just “gestures of irreverence in relation to traditional media” of a sort that Traba claims had already been widely accepted by the art establishment, at least on an international level. Traba casts doubt on Colombia’s position on art, suggesting that “novice works, full of defects” might be held in too high esteem due to the conscious desire to “shatter” conventions already ruptured so many times before. In her criticism, Traba mentions important recent works of Colombian art that do, in her opinion, embody avant-garde values. Along these lines, she names artists Beatriz González, Antonio Caro, Saturnino Ramírez, Santiago Cárdenas, Oscar Muñoz, Gustavo Zalamea, and Ana Mercedes Hoyos.

“El VII Salón Atenas” is a fairly unusual text of the critical writings that Marta Traba (1930–1983) produced about Colombia during her career. It is one of the last texts she wrote about the Colombian art scene, with which she had little contact at the time since she had not been in the country since 1969.

Traba was a crucial figure in the development of modern art in Colombia. She was instrumental in the recognition received by major figures in the history of Colombian art including Alejandro Obregón, Fernando Botero, Beatriz González, Feliza Burzstyn, and Bernardo Salcedo. She was the founder and director of Revista Prisma (1957), and one of the founders of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (created in 1963), which she went on to direct for a number of years. When she left Colombia, a group of young critics who considered themselves champions of contemporary art came to dominate the Colombian art scene. In the article “El VII Salón Atenas,” Traba contemplates the work of a handful of critics that came after her, among them Eduardo Serrano Rueda (b. 1939), Álvaro Barrios (b. 1945), Miguel González (b. 1950) and Alberto Sierra. She accuses them of supporting “what they consider avant-garde […] to the exclusion of all else and of doing so with such zeal that they end up discouraging anyone that dares to dissent.” 

José Hernán Aguilar and Eduardo Serrano Rueda responded to Traba’s polemical article [for the former’s response, see “VII Salón Atenas: Problemas politicos,” doc. no. 1098946]. In the catalogue of the exhibition VIII Salón Atenas [see “VIII Salón Atenas,” doc. no. 1094348], Serrano Rueda asserts, referring to this article, “it would seem that Marta Traba came to the country to remind us that the true avant-garde has only been seen in Colombia in the sixties.”