In this interview held after his return from Europe, Colombian painter, muralist, and sculptor Luis Alberto Acuña Tapias (1904–1984) expresses the view—upheld by many Colombian artists of the period—that Bogota had greater affinity with Madrid than with Paris. There were a number of reasons for this: the language, the customs, the teachers, and art that, in Acuña’s view, developed in the most felicitous manner. Particularly significant was the value Acuña placed on what he learned in Spain, not only due to the quality of the teachers there but also to the works found in museums like El Prado. In his view, El Prado housed “the best and most comprehensive collection [in Europe]” greater than the one found in the Louvre in Paris. In terms of education and teaching, Acuña also placed value on what he learned from works by Velázquez, El Greco, Goya, and Zurbarán. Indeed, he believed the education gained from copying paintings by those artists was far greater than anything taught by the teachers at the schools he attended.
If, for this Colombian student, the atmosphere in Madrid was the most favorable to education, Paris represented a threat due to the predominance of Modernist tendencies there, tendencies that Acuña found dubious. Indeed, in the late twenties Acuña was not alone in that position; many artists continued to question the validity of the avant-garde.
Acuña was one of the artists close to Colombia’s Bachué movement. He also took great interest in Mexican muralism.