The author of this document claims that Colombian painting has no past. According to the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the visual arts produced in Colombia from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century are of no interest whatsoever; they are utterly devoid of creativity and consist of nothing but frivolous, obsequious painting. Traba acknowledges the technical advances made by nineteenth-century artists in their work. But in her opinion, none of the twentieth-century artists that she mentions—Luis Alberto Acuña Tapias, Alipio Jaramillo, Pedro Nel Gómez, Carlos Correa, and Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo—ever came up with any revolutionary ideas at all. She considers their work to be extremely conservative, and says that “neither pictorial socialism, nor realism, nor those horrendous distortions” managed to “disrupt the traditional forms of painting.” According to Traba, it was not until the arrival of the painter Alejandro Obregón, and those who came after him, that Colombian painting was able to rid itself of traditional themes, making Obregón one of the founding fathers of modern Colombian painting. Among the other pioneers of local modern art, Traba names Ramírez Villamizar, Fernando Botero, Guillermo Wiedemann, and Enrique Grau. She also recognizes the work of Judith Márquez Montoya, Cecilia Porras de Child, and Carlos Rojas, who was a student at that time, and who she includes because of what she sees as his promising potential.