In this article, Colombian artist and critic Beatriz González Aranda reclaims the mural work of Pedro Nel Gómez, thus adding it to the current reinterpretation of the muralist movement in Latin America. The article was written in six parts, giving an outline of Gómez’s artwork and how it was received: 1. The presence of the mining region in his work. 2. The links with European art, based on Gómez’s stay in Europe. 3. The establishment of his own school. 4. His concern about the national situation. 5. Public art. 6. A criticism of the muralist movement. The article includes testimony by the artist, reproductions of his works, and sketches for his murals. It presents two themes that contribute to the analysis of the murals by Nel Gómez, the multifaceted artist from Antioquia. First, it identifies the artist’s mural work as a product of his personal perspective on history, which allows "poetic license" and makes no documentary claim. Second, the murals interweave classic with Modern art, based on an artistic approach prevalent in Italy when the artist was living there. The writer mentions the Italian Novecento (1923–35), a movement little studied in Colombia, which promoted New Figuration, between tradition and contemporary art, in the period between the two world wars. This trend was broadly disseminated by Margherita Sarfatti in Europe and in some Latin American countries as a Fascist art project, whose aesthetic was appropriated by Latin American artists such as Nel Gómez. The appropriators then turned it into a national art.  

Pedro Nel Gómez (1899–1984) was a Colombian engineer, architect, urban planner, painter, sculptor, and muralist. He said that art would have to serve the people of the future, thus he painted for the future what he saw in the lives of his people’s past and present. He was also a militant member of the Colombian Communist Party and a highly productive artist, which made him one of the great contemporary masters in Latin America.   Nel Gómez’s murals followed a geometrically ordered composition, as established by artist and researcher Beatriz González (born 1938), and based on Gomez’s sketch [for] Homenaje al hombre [Homage to Man] (1949). The writer thus linked Gómez with Abstract art. On this point, the contributions of this document are evident: in addition to recognizing sketches as a primary source for analyzing murals, González distanced herself from critics such as Jorge Zalamea (1905–1969), who believed that Gómez’s work showed no sign of the “the spirit of geometry.” The writer also distanced herself from Marta Traba (1923–1983), the Argentine critic initially based in Bogotá, with whom González had studied and who considered the mural compositions of Nel Gómez “chaotic.” The writer’s critical exercise in rehabilitation opened a new space for murals such as Momentos críticos de la nación [Critical Moments for the Nation] (Banco de la República, Bogotá, 1959), in the context of her own aesthetics.