In this article, Marta Traba maintains that an artist should use a repertoire of forms from nature, without trying to copy its objective appearance. The elements taken from reality should be used as aesthetic tools that offer an artist a chance to invent subjective realities. Meanwhile, an artist’s practice should be determined based on individual ideals and intentions, subject to his own freedom. The writer stresses one idea: that the viewing public should understand the formal elements (composition, color, rhythm, line) in all works of art throughout time, particularly Modern art and, above all, abstract art. It should be understood that these elements are permanent, universal codes established in nature, but artists use them as simple aesthetic resources that allow them to communicate.

This article is especially significant because it proposes that artistic discipline requires a commitment on the part of both the artist and the viewing public. The commitment that critic Marta Traba (1923–1983) defends here is the opportunity to either create or comprehend the art object as a thing that cannot be compared to (and is perhaps incompatible with) the codes of nature and reality. This position would become the main argument through which Traba, an Argentine art critic initially based in Bogotá, would try to explain and support artwork along the lines of, or committed to, abstractionism. Traba arrived in Colombia in September 1954, and this article is one of a set of writings published in the daily newspaper Intermedio (1956–1957). On the one hand, these articles tackled criticism based on the specific problems around a given artist, work, or exhibition. But, on the other hand, beyond the specifics, Traba broke new ground in Colombia by setting forth the theoretical concepts that would be the basis of her thinking throughout the second half of the 1950s. Among the texts written during that period, Traba constructed a discourse determined by her interest in promoting the autonomy of the visual arts. She strongly insisted on the need for art creators and critics to strike out on their own paths, separate from other disciplines or discourse. Traba even suggested that the viewing public, the artists, and the critics consider visual elements and the aesthetic judgments underlying the works as a medium and an essential purpose of the works.The then-president General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla issued a censure order on the daily newspaper El Tiempo (from August 1955 to May 1957),which prompted changing its name to Intermedio.