Deborah Arango

Projected by her plastic and human integrity, Débora Arango, a thorough painter, who had been a pupil of Pedro Nel Gómez and Eladio Vélez, managed, like the greats, to surpass her teachers and anticipate her time. The harsh, brutal, and profoundly human art of each of her works was not only incomprehensible for the 1940s but also rejected and condemned.

Thus, a work created in an environment that was not conducive to it had to conform to the voluntary retirement of its author and remain in exile in a house in Envigado for more than 30 years, notes Tulio Rabinovich, director of the Medellín Museum of Modern Art at the time of its publication, in the book's introduction. Fortunately for Colombian art, this is a past story. The authenticity and quality of her plastic work have long ceased to be a matter of debate, and Débora Arango's figure has, by her own right, been inscribed among the list of the most important Colombian artists of the 20th century.