The art critic Fernando García Esteban analyses the difference between an “opinion” on the Visual Arts and the qualified judgment that should be issued by the art critic. It reflects the enormous difference between the artistic ideals that generally measure the ability of the trade to reproduce reality, and the contemporary proposals that defy a common observer. In his text, the author underscores the need to diminish biases and to increase the outreach with contemporary proposals through education.

The new art critique that emerges in Uruguay in the middle of the twentieth century considers it a priority to take as reference international artistic guidelines. Commencing in the fifties one can observed the views of both the public and the artists. The critic is put forth as a qualified mediator, for which he must, build his own platform of acknowledgement beforehand.

The article by Fernando García Esteban (1917–82) points to the new stand taken in Uruguay on visual artistic critique seeking to consolidate, in some way, his professional accuracy. In the author’s opinion, the role of the critic required a wide range of historical, sociological, technical, and scientific, knowledge etc. and, above all, one has to have a “broad vision”. The new assessment by the writer discredits the old modalities applied to critiquing established in the twenties and thirties and literary in character. However, in this particular case, García Esteban established another category that he calls “the opinion holder” that was widespread in local Montevidean mediums on the visual arts. It was his belief that “the opinion holder” valued what he saw through traditional aesthetic assumptions, based on old references (or ideals) around a works capacity to imitate.  He is the one who is uneasy unto what has not yet been consecrated and observed with the sieve of biases and away from the concerns of contemporary art. The text points to the ironic view the local medium had of itself and how it prided itself of its intellectual Avant-garde, while considering the existent educational deficiency (especially in secondary education) and how to provide intellectual tools to broaden the sensitivity on the new visual artistic trends

One can see in the entirety of the article by García Esteban is a call to updating both the awareness, as well as, the reflections on The Visual Arts, which, from “a local” point of view was in consonance with an internationalized modernity, derived from the avant-garde movements, although always accentuated and widespread in the visual arts of the post second post world-war period. [Please refer to the ICAA digital archive for these other texts by Fernando García Esteban: “Acerca de la crítica de arte” (doc. no. 1227280), “Reflexiones Sobre la Plástica Nacional” (doc. no. 1227362) and “La Escuela de París y Nuestro Medio Artístico” (doc. no. 1227399)]